You will need a working Pylons installation, so if you haven't yet done so please install Pylons and run through the Getting Started guide.
The curve and surface fitting software we will use is the open source Python Equations
package. Download the latest release here and save it for now. We will install it as a 'third-party package' in the next section of the tutorial.
Python Equations requires Numeric Python (NumPy) and Scientific Tools for Python (SciPy) to run. The official source and binary releases for both of these packages can be downloaded here. Debian and Ubuntu users can simply 'sudo apt-get install python-scipy python-numpy'.
And that's it. When the last section of this tutorial discusses adding graphs, we'll need to install a plotting package - but that is not needed for a basic curve and surface fitting web site, so it is not a requirement for the tutorial.
Now that all of that is taken care of, let's get down to business!
Next: --> Simple working 2D curve fitter
