IPython is an awesome project which provides a much better Python shell than the one you get from running $ python in the command-line. It has many cool functions (running Unix commands from the Python shell, easy copy & paste, creating Matplotlib charts in-line, etc.) and I'll let you refer to the documentation to discover them.
Before we install IPython, we'll need to get some dependencies. Run the following:
$ brew update # Always good to do
$ brew install zeromq # Necessary for pyzmq
$ brew install pyqt # Necessary for the qtconsole
$ pip install pyzmq
$ pip isntall pygments
$ pip install jinja2
$ pip install tornado
It may take a few minutes to build these.
Once it's done, we can install IPython with all the available options:
$ pip install ipython
If you want a more fine grained command you can try the following:
For zsh -> $ pip install 'ipython[zmq,qtconsole,notebook,test]'
For bash -> $ pip install ipython[zmq,qtconsole,notebook,test]