Python in a Nutshell, 2nd Edition

The Numeric Package

The main module in the Numeric package is the Numeric module, which supplies the array type, functions that act on array instances, and so-called “universal functions” that operate on arrays and other sequences. Numeric is one of the few Python packages that is often used with the idiom from Numeric import *, even though that idiom does give occasional problems even in this case. A popular alternative, probably the best compromise between conciseness and clarity, is to import Numeric with a short name (e.g., import Numeric as N) and qualify each name by preceding it with N.