My experience is the opposite: Python code generally looks like executable pseudocode, the opposite extreme from assembly code. If you're finding this wavelet code unreadable, like I do, most likely it's because you don't understand the math it's implementing, like I don't.

I've always found Python to be pretty readable. Are you just talking about the matrix math, or the rest?

All of it. The 40 line methods with no self documenting variables, order or sense.

It's probably transliterated right out of a math textbook into Python.