## PEP572 -- Assignment Expressions

### The Walrus Operator & Application to Newton's Method

This past week saw the debut of PEP572 in the release of Python 3.8.0. A PEP is a Python Enhancement Proposal, a document that describes a feature and requests its incorporation into the Python language. Now PEP572 in particular was about as controversial as they come, so much so that it caused Guido von Rossum, the original author of Python, to step down from his role as Benevolent Dictator for Life and form a committee to replace him. Yikes!

This past week, I contemplated a number of math modeling applications for publication here. Ultimately, I decided to instead write about my approach to implementing math models, specifically in cases where Python’s itertools package can work its magic. The itertools package is part of the Python standard library which is itself enormous. Tack on all the high-quality 3rd-party math packages (e.g. numpy, pyomo, etc.), and finding the best tool for the job often requires more effort than simply using the tools you already know. This post is a little bit about prefacing future math modeling posts, but is mostly geared toward expanding your arsenal at a low investigative cost.