This is a collection of documentation that I've found on the web and which you might find useful while working on your homework or exams.
The Maxima homepage has a large collection of documentation.
Introduction to Maxima: A basic introduction that probably covers enough for this class.
The Maxima Reference Manual: The complete reference for Maxima. It covers everything, but assumes you already understand how to use it.
A Byte of Python: This is a nice introduction to python. It covers all of the basics at a level appropriate to this class. Unless you find it interesting, I'd suggest ignoring chapters 8, 11, and 13 – 16 since they aren't needed for this class.
The Python Tutorial: This is the definitive tutorial for Python by the BDFL. It's a good introduction if you have some programing experience.
The Python Library Reference: The compendium of modules that make up the official python library. Probably more than you want to know, but it can be useful.
matplotlib – A very good set of plotting routines. This is practically a must have! There is a lot of good documentation on the web page. The users guide is a little thin, but is available on the course website. The pylab module included in matplotlib is the most useful part of this package.
Numeric – A set of array manipulation routines. The pdf manual is available from the course website
scipy – A set of science oriented utilities for python. This is included in the Enthought Python distribution.
scipy.stats: Lots of useful statistical and data analysis function. This includes virtually every pdf that you will want to use.
ROOT – Access to the entire ROOT library. See Chapter 20 of the the ROOT users manual for detailed documentation.
The ROOT homepage has complete documentation. The users manual (pdf) covers everything in detail. The reference manual has complete documentation for all the ROOT classes.