Since more than one year without any message!... And the new one is almost nothing from me, just links to good pages.
Two easy ways to install python+ipython+numpy+matplotlib+scipy:
Anaconda from continuum (but only 64bit version for OSX, which can be a problem for MySQLdb):
Ask for the academic licence if you can.
http://continuum.io/
Once installed, you will need to add the anaconda/bin directory to your PATH and the anaconda directory to your PYTHONPATH.
Canopy from Entought:
https://www.enthought.com/products/canopy/
Once installed, you must setup the virtual environment by adding to your .tcshrc:
setenv VIRTUAL_ENV /Users/YOURNAME/Library/Enthought/Canopy_32bit/User
setenv PATH $VIRTUAL_ENV/bin:$PATH
!!! Warning !!! When using this virtual environment, don't install using pip with the --user option. Install directly, as for example:
pip install pyfits
UPDATE: Another (better) package comes from STSCI, it's UREKA: http://ssb.stsci.edu/ureka/
Here follows good pages to learn python. Those pages are made using Notebook, which is very efficient to show/share python programs.
Here are the links:
http://nbviewer.ipython.org/urls/raw.github.com/jrjohansson/scientific-python-lectures/master/Lecture-0-Scientific-Computing-with-Python.ipynb
http://nbviewer.ipython.org/urls/raw.github.com/jrjohansson/scientific-python-lectures/master/Lecture-1-Introduction-to-Python-Programming.ipynb
http://nbviewer.ipython.org/urls/raw.github.com/jrjohansson/scientific-python-lectures/master/Lecture-2-Numpy.ipynb
http://nbviewer.ipython.org/urls/raw.github.com/jrjohansson/scientific-python-lectures/master/Lecture-3-Scipy.ipynb
http://nbviewer.ipython.org/urls/raw.github.com/jrjohansson/scientific-python-lectures/master/Lecture-4-Matplotlib.ipynb
http://nbviewer.ipython.org/urls/raw.github.com/jrjohansson/scientific-python-lectures/master/Lecture-6B-HPC.ipynb
