Official abbreviation for: import scipy as sp/sc

Question

I’ve seen both:

import scipy as sp

and:

import scipy as sc

Is there an official preference listed anywhere?

For example, in the Introduction of the Scipy documentation, it is recommended to

import numpy as np
import matplotlib as mpl
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

but a similar abbreviation is not offered for the Scipy package.

In this question, sp is recommended, but the link to the Scipy docs doesn’t actually specify sp over sc.

Asked By: DanHickstein

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Source

Answer 1

The “official” answer, according to the Scipy documentation, is that there is really no reason to ever

import scipy

since all of the interesting functions in Scipy are actually located in the submodules, which are not automatically imported. Therefore, the recommended method is to use

from scipy import fftpack
from scipy import integrate

then, functions can be called with

fftpack.fft()

Personally, I always use

import scipy.fftpack

and live with the slightly longer function call

scipy.fftpack.fft(data)

This way I know where the functions are coming from.

Answered By: DanHickstein

Answer 2

As cel pointed out, the API documentation recommends to not import scipy, but to import specific modules from scipy:

The scipy namespace itself only contains functions imported from numpy. These functions still exist for backwards compatibility, but should be imported from numpy directly.

Therefore, importing only the scipy base package does only provide numpy content, which could be imported from numpy directly.

If somebody still wants the main package, sp for Scipy would be convenient as np usially is used for NumPy.

Answered By: Finwood

Answer 3

Based on github repositories the most commonly used is:

import scipy as sp

Github usage stats

Answered By: Vipul Patel

Official abbreviation for: import scipy as sp/sc

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