Hans Fangohr++ aka A Better Spyder Tutorial

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Why not anticipate users' problems - especially when you give them advanced tips?

He says, set IPython Console to do symbolic math (Tools > Preferences) and then you'll see cuter stuff.

He doesn't say :

Start a new console.
What happens if you run into ..

These commands were executed:
from __future__ import division
from sympy import *
x, y, z, t = symbols('x y z t')
k, m, n = symbols('k m n', integer=True)
f, g, h = symbols('f g h', cls=Function)
Warning: pylab (numpy and matplotlib) and symbolic math (sympy) are both
enabled at the same time. Some pylab functions are going to be overrided by
the sympy module (e.g. plot)

expr = (x + y) ** 3
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<ipython-input-1-530ade24fb9f>", line 1, in <module>
    expr = (x + y) ** 3
NameError: name 'x' is not defined

In short, what an ass!

Fortunately, we have some online angels :

https://github.com/spyder-ide/spyder/issues/3255
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/43915513/how-to-get-latex-style-output-from-sympy-in-spyder-ipython-console
https://github.com/nteract/hydrogen/issues/1119

I go to Start > Anaconda > Anaconda Prompt and then do

> conda install -c conda-forge miktex

Dat fix it? No!!

What did?

The commands that *IT* (see above) says *were* executed apparently weren't! So, you have to manually do :

x, y, z, t = symbols( 'x y z t') 
only to find that

NameError: name 'symbols' is not defined

And then,

from sympy import symbols

That gets

expr = (x + y)**3
To NOT complain.

Now, when you do expr, you get the Unicode formatted pretty thing with the 3 really looking like a superscript. Not what you want obviously :)

So, what does work :

from sympy import init_printing
init_printing()

Now, when you do

expr

You get