Python Find the mean school assignment - What is a loop? - python

I have been working on this assignment for about 2 weeks and have nothing done. I am a starter at coding and my teacher is really not helping me with it. She redirects me to her videos that I have to learn from every time and will not directly tell or help me on how I can do it. Here are the instructions to the assignment (said in a video, but made it into text.
Find the mean
Create a program that finds the mean of a list of numbers.
Iterate through it, and instead of printing each item, you want to add them together.
Create a new variable inside of that, that takes the grand total when you add things together,
And then you have to divide it by the length of your array, for python/java script you’ll need to use the method that lets you know the length of your list.
Bonus point for kids who can find the median, to do that you need to sort your list and then you need to remove items from the right and the left until you only have one left
All you’re doing is you need to create a variable that is your list
Create another variable that is a empty one at the moment and be a number
Iterate through your list and add each of the numbers to the variable you created
Then divide the number by the number of items that you had in the list.
Here's what I've done so far.
num = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6];
total = 0;
total = (num[0] + total)
total = (num[1] + total)
total = (num[2] + total)
total = (num[3] + total)
total = (num[4] + total)
total = (num[5] + total)
print(total)
However, she tells me I need to shorten down the total = (num[_] + total) parts into a loop. Here is how she is telling me to do a loop in one of her videos.
for x in ____: print(x)
or
for x in range(len(___)): print (x+1, ____[x])
there is also
while i < len(___):
print(___[i])
i = i + 1
I really don't understand how to do this so explain it like I'm a total noob.

First of all, loops in python are of two types.
while: a while loop executes the code in a body until a condition is true. For example:
i = 0
while(i < 5):
i = i + 1
executes i = i + 1 until i < 5 is true, meaning that when i will be equal to 5 the loop will terminate because its condition becomes false.
for: a for loop in python iterates over the items of any sequence, from the first to the last, and execute its body at each iteration.
Note: in both cases, by loop body I mean the indented code, in the example above the body is i = i + 5.
Iterating over a list. You can iterate over a list:
Using an index
As each position of the array is indexed with a positive number from 0 to the length of the array minus 1, you can access the positions of the array with an incremental index. So, for example:
i = 0
while i < len(arr):
print(arr[i])
i = i + 1
will access arr[0] in the first iteration, arr[1] in the second iteration and so on, up to arr[len(arr)-1] in the last iteration. Then, when i is further incremented, i = len(arr) and so the condition in the while loop (i < arr[i]) becomes false. So the loop is broken.
Using an iterator
I won't go in the details of how an iterator works under the surface since it may be too much to absorb for a beginner. However, what matters to you is the following. In Python you can use an iterator to write the condition of a for loop, as your teacher showed you in the example:
for x in arr:
print(x)
An iterator is intuitively an object that iterates over something that has the characteristic of being "iterable". Lists are not the only iterable elements in python, however they are probably the most important to know. Using an iterator on a list allows you to access in order all the elements of the list. The value of the element of the list is stored in the variable x at each iteration. Therefore:
iter 1: x = arr[0]
iter 2: x = arr[1]
...
iter len(arr)-1: x = arr[len(arr)-1]
Once all the elements of the list are accessed, the loop terminates.
Note: in python, the function range(n) creates an "iterable" from 0 to n-1, so the for loop
for i in range(len(arr)):
print(arr[i])
uses an iterator to create the sequence of values stored in i and then i is in turn used on the array arr to access its elements positionally.
Summing the elements. If you understand what I explained to you, it should be straightforward to write a loop to sum all the elements of a list. You initialize a variable sum=0 before the loop. Then, you add the element accessed as we saw above at each iteration to the variable sum. It will be something like:
sum = 0
for x in arr:
sum = sum + x
I will let you write an equivalent code with the other two methods I showed you and do the other points of the assignment by yourself. I am sure that once you'll understand how it works you'll be fine. I hope to have answered your question.

She wants you to loop through the list.
Python is really nice makes this easier than other languages.
I have an example below that is close to what you need but I do not want to do your homework for you.
listName = [4,8,4,7,84]
for currentListValue in listName:
#Do your calculating here...
#Example: tempVar = tempVar + (currentListValue * 2)
as mentioned in the comments w3schools is a good reference for python.

Related

Python how do i make list appends / extends quicker?

Heyo all.
Trying to get better at python and started doing leetcode problems.
Im currently doing one, were the goal is to capture water.
Link => https://leetcode.com/problems/trapping-rain-water/
problem is; it times me out for taking too long. My code is certainly inefficient. Afer googling around i found that .append is supposedly very slow / inefficient. So is .extend.
Cant find any obvious ways of making my code faster; hence my arrival here.
any response is much appreciated
class Solution:
def trap(self, height: List[int]) -> int:
max_height = max(height)
water_blocks = 0
for element in range(max_height):
local_map = []
element = element + 1
for block in height:
if block >= element:
local_map.extend([1])
else:
local_map.extend([0])
if local_map.count(1) > 1:
first_index = local_map.index(1)
reversed_list = local_map[::-1]
last_index = len(local_map) - 1 - reversed_list.index(1)
water_count = last_index - first_index - 1 - (local_map.count(1) - 2)
water_blocks += water_count
else:
continue
return water_blocks
Although many of your count and index calls can be avoided, the two big nested loops might still be a problem. For the outer loop, max_height can be large number and the inner loop iterates over the full list. You might need to come up with a different algorithm.
I don't have a leetcode account, so I can't really test my code, but this would be my suggestion: It iterates over the height-list only once, with a small inner loop to find the next matching wall.
class Solution:
def trap(self, h):
water = 0
current_height = 0
for i, n in enumerate(h):
# found a "bucket", add water
if n < current_height:
water += current_height - n
else: # found a wall. calculate usable height
current_height = self.n_or_max(h[i+1:], n)
return water
def n_or_max(self, h, n):
local_max = 0
for i in h:
if i > local_max:
local_max = i
# that's high enough, return n
if i >= n:
return n
return local_max
Here are some pointers:
Do not use list.count() or list.index() (that is, try to remove local_map.count(1), local_map.index(1) and reversed_list.index(1)). The first will loop (internally) over the whole list, which is obviously expensive if the list is large. The second will loop over the list until a 1 is found. Currently you even have two calls to local_map.count(1) which will always return the same answer, so at least just store the result in a variable. In your loop over blocks, you construct local_map yourself, so you do in fact know exactly what it contains, you should not have to search through it afterwards. Just put a few ifs into the first loop over blocks.
The operation local_map[::-1] not only runs over the whole list, but additionally copies the whole thing into a new list (backwards, but that's not really contributing to the issue). Again, this new list does not contain new information, so you can figure out the value of water_count without doing this.
The above is really the major issues. A slight further optimization can be obtained by eliminating element = element + 1. Just shift the range, as in range(1, max_height + 1).
Also, as written in the comments, prefer list.append(x) to list.extend([x]). It's not huge, but the latter has to create an additional list (of length 1), put x into it, loop over the list and append its elements (just x) to the large list. Finally, the length-1 list is thrown away. On the contrary, list.append(x) just appends x to the list, no temporary length-1 list needed.
Note that list.append() is not slow. It's a function call, which is always somewhat slow, but the actual data operation is fast: constant time and even cleverly amortized, as juanpa.arrivillaga writes.
Here's another way of looking at the problem. This scans left to right over the bins, and at each point, I track how many units of water are dammed up at each level. When there's a tall wall, we tally up whatever units it was damming, and clear them. However, this still gets an "overtime" flag on the next to the last test, which has about 10,000 entries. It takes 20 seconds on my relatively old box.
class Solution():
def trap(self, height):
trapped = 0
accum = [0]*max(height)
lastwall = -1
for h in height:
# Take credit for everything up to our height.
trapped += sum(accum[0:h])
accum[0:h] = [0]*h
for v in range(h,lastwall):
accum[v] += 1
lastwall = max(lastwall,h)
return trapped
print(Solution().trap([0,1,0,2,1,0,1,3,2,1,2,1])) # 6
print(Solution().trap([4,2,0,3,2,5])) # 9

Inner while loop doesn't get executed

Found that the control never reaches the inner while loop in this snippet for deleting a duplicate number
numbers=[1,6,6,7]
k=len(numbers)
i=0
j=0
while i in range(k-1):
while j in range(i+1,k):
if numbers[i] == numbers[j]:
numbers.remove(numbers[j])
k-=1
j-=1
j += 1
i += 1
print(numbers)
Your code does not make j start at i+1. Instead it starts at zero and never changes. The inner loop never runs because 0 is outside of the range you are testing.
Try this simple change:
i=0
while i < k+1:
j=i+1
while j < k:
if numbers[i] == numbers[j]:
...
The main change is moving the initialization of j inside the first while loop, so it updates each time you go through it, and never starts out less than or equal to i.
The other change I made is much less important. Rather than using i in range(...) and j in range(...) for the while loop conditions, I just did an inequality test. This is exactly the same as what the range membership test does under the covers, but avoids unnecessary testing for things that can't happen (like j being too small, now). It also makes the loop look a lot less like a for loop, which uses for i in range(...) syntax a lot (with a different meaning).
Another issue you may run into later, with some sets with multiple sets of duplicates is that your code to remove the jth element probably doesn't do what you intend. The call numbers.remove(numbers[j]) removes the first value equal to numbers[j] from the list, which is going to be the one at index i rather than the one at index j. To delete a list item by index, you want to use del numbers[j].
It doesn't reach because j and i starts at 0 value and in the inner while loop the condition is j in range(i+1, k) which means range(1, 4) and 0 in range(1, 4) would be False. Anyways, you should avoid using j and i as counters and use a for loop instead.
But the solution is easier and doesn't need to traverse the list, if you wanna remove the duplicate values, you can do as below:
numbers = [1, 6, 6, 7]
print(list(set(numbers)))
The result is: [1, 6, 7]
You could remove duplicates from a list in Python by using the dict.fromkeys().
numbers=[1,6,6,7]
final_numbers = list(dict.fromkeys(numbers))
print(final_numbers)
In this example, we use the dict.fromkeys() method to create a dictionary from numbers variable. We then use list() to convert our data from a dictionary back to a list. Then, on the final line, we print out our revised list.
Another option is to use set.
Sets are used to store collections of unique items in Python. Unlike lists, sets cannot store duplicate values.
We can convert our list to a set to remove duplicated items.
numbers=[1,6,6,7]
final_numbers = list(set(numbers))
print(final_numbers)

What is fastest way to determine numbers are within specific range of each other in Python?

I have list of numbers as follows -
L = [ 1430185458, 1430185456, 1430185245, 1430185246, 1430185001 ]
I am trying to determine which numbers are within range of "2" from each other. List will be in unsorted when I receive it.
If there are numbers within range of 2 from each other I have to return "1" at exact same position number was received in.
I was able to achieve desired result , however code is running very slow. My approach involves sorting list, iterating it twice taking two pointers and comparing it successively. I will have millions of records coming as seperate lists.
Just trying to see what is best possible approach to address this problem.
Edit - Apology as I was away for a while. List can have any number of elements in it ranging from 1 to n. Idea is to return either 0 or 1 in exact same position number was received. I can not post actual code I implemented but here is pseudo code.
a. create new list as list of list with second part as 0 for each element. We assume that there are no numbers within range of 2 of each other.
[[1430185458,0], [1430185456,0], [1430185245,0], [1430185246,0], [1430185001,0]]
b. sort original list
c. compare first element to second, second to third and so on until end of list is reached and whenever difference is less than or equal to 2 update corresponding second elements in step a to 1.
[[1430185458,1], [1430185456,1], [1430185245,1], [1430185246,1], [1430185001,0]]
The goal is to be fast, so that presumably means an O(N) algorithm. Building an NxN difference matrix is O(N^2), so that's not good at all. Sorting is O(N*log(N)), so that's out, too. Assuming average case O(1) behavior for dictionary insert and lookup, the following is an O(N) algorithm. It rips through a list of a million random integers in a couple of seconds.
def in_range (numbers) :
result = [0] * len(numbers)
index = {}
for idx, number in enumerate(numbers) :
for offset in range(-2,3) :
match_idx = index.get(number+offset)
if match_idx is not None :
result[match_idx] = result[idx] = 1
index[number] = idx
return result
Update
I have to return "1" at exact same position number was received in.
The update to the question asks for a list of the form [[1,1],[2,1],[5,0]] given an input of [1,2,5]. I didn't do that. Instead, my code returns [1,1,0] given [1,2,5]. It's about 15% faster to produce that simple 0/1 list compared to the [[value,in_range],...] list. The desired list can easily be created using zip:
zip(numbers,in_range(numbers)) # Generator
list(zip(numbers,in_range(numbers))) # List of (value,in_range) tuples
I think this does what you need (process() modifies the list L). Very likely it's still optimizable, though:
def process(L):
s = [(v,k) for k,v in enumerate(L)]
s.sort()
j = 0
for i,v_k in enumerate(s):
v = v_k[0]
while j < i and v-s[j][0]>2:
j += 1
while j < i:
L[s[j][1]] = 1
L[s[i][1]] = 1
j += 1

How to change for-loop iterator variable in the loop in Python?

I want to know if is it possible to change the value of the iterator in its for-loop?
For example I want to write a program to calculate prime factor of a number in the below way :
def primeFactors(number):
for i in range(2,number+1):
if (number%i==0)
print(i,end=',')
number=number/i
i=i-1 #to check that factor again!
My question : Is it possible to change the last two line in a way that when I change i and number in the if block, their value change in the for loop!
Update: Defining the iterator as a global variable, could help me? Why?
Short answer (like Daniel Roseman's): No
Long answer: No, but this does what you want:
def redo_range(start, end):
while start < end:
start += 1
redo = (yield start)
if redo:
start -= 2
redone_5 = False
r = redo_range(2, 10)
for i in r:
print(i)
if i == 5 and not redone_5:
r.send(True)
redone_5 = True
Output:
3
4
5
5
6
7
8
9
10
As you can see, 5 gets repeated. It used a generator function which allows the last value of the index variable to be repeated. There are simpler methods (while loops, list of values to check, etc.) but this one matches you code the closest.
No.
Python's for loop is like other languages' foreach loops. Your i variable is not a counter, it is the value of each element in a list, in this case the list of numbers between 2 and number+1. Even if you changed the value, that would not change what was the next element in that list.
The standard way of dealing with this is to completely exhaust the divisions by i in the body of the for loop itself:
def primeFactors(number):
for i in range(2,number+1):
while number % i == 0:
print(i, end=',')
number /= i
It's slightly more efficient to do the division and remainder in one step:
def primeFactors(number):
for i in range(2, number+1):
while True:
q, r = divmod(number, i)
if r != 0:
break
print(i, end=',')
number = q
The only way to change the next value yielded is to somehow tell the iterable what the next value to yield should be. With a lot of standard iterables, this isn't possible. however, you can do it with a specially coded generator:
def crazy_iter(iterable):
iterable = iter(iterable)
for item in iterable:
sent = yield item
if sent is not None:
yield None # Return value of `iterable.send(...)`
yield sent
num = 10
iterable = crazy_iter(range(2, 11))
for i in iterable:
if not num%i:
print i
num /= i
if i > 2:
iterable.send(i-1)
I would definitely not argue that this is easier to read than the equivalent while loop, but it does demonstrate sending stuff to a generator which may gain your team points at your next local programming trivia night.
It is not possible the way you are doing it. The for loop variable can be changed inside each loop iteration, like this:
for a in range (1, 6):
print a
a = a + 1
print a
print
The resulting output is:
1
2
2
3
3
4
4
5
5
6
It does get modified inside each for loop iteration.
The reason for the behavior displayed by Python's for loop is that, at the beginning of each iteration, the for loop variable is assinged the next unused value from the specified iterator. Therefore, whatever changes you make to the for loop variable get effectively destroyed at the beginning of each iteration.
To achieve what I think you may be needing, you should probably use a while loop, providing your own counter variable, your own increment code and any special case modifications for it you may need inside your loop. Example:
a = 1
while a <= 5:
print a
if a == 3:
a = a + 1
a = a + 1
print a
print
The resulting output is:
1
2
2
3
3
5
5
6
Yes, we can only if we dont change the reference of the object that we are using. If we can edit the number by accessing the reference of number variable, then what you asked is possible.
A simple example:
a=[1,2,3]
a=a+[4]==>here, a new object is created which plots to different address.
a+=[4]==>here , the same object is getting updated which give us the desired result.
number=10
list1=list(range(2,number+1))
# list1
for i in list1:
print(list1,i)
if (number%i==0):
print(i,end=',')
number=number//i #we can simply replace it with number//=i to edit the number without changing the reference or without creating a new object.
try:
[list1.pop() for i in range(10,0,-1) if(i>number)]
#here pop() method is working on the same object which list created by number refers. so, we can able to change the iterable in the forloop.
except:
continue
i=i-1 #to check that factor again!

For Loop to While Loop using IN for while loops

I am quite new to Python 2.7 so I had a couple of questions regarding using for loops to while loops.
For example: I am writing this definition
def missingDoor(trapdoor,roomwidth,roomheight,step):
safezone = []
hazardflr = givenSteps(roomwidth,step,True)
safetiles = []
for m in hazardflr:
safetiles.append((m,step))
i = 0
while i < len(safetiles):
nextSafe = safetiles[i]
if knownSafe(roomwidth, roomheight, nextSafe[0], nextSafe[1]):
if trapdoor[nextSafe[0]/roomwidth][nextSafe[0]%roomwidth] is "0":
if nextSafe[0] not in safezone:
safezone.append(nextSafe[0])
for e in givenSteps(roomwidth,nextSafe[0],True):
if knownSafe(roomwidth, roomheight, e, nextSafe[0]):
if trapdoor[e/roomwidth][e%roomwidth] is "0" and (e,nextSafe[0]) not in safetiles:
safetiles.append((e,nextSafe[0]))
i += 1
return sorted(safezone)
I am trying to turn all the for loops to a while loops, so this is currently what I have written so far. I actually dont know if we say "While e in " works near the middle of the code. But using the while loop rules, will this code do the same as the for loop one?
safezone = []
hazardflr = givenSteps(roomwidth,step,True)
safetiles = []
m=0
while m < hazardflr:
safetiles.append((m,step))
i = 0
while i < len(safetiles):
nextSafe = safetiles[i]
if knownSafe(roomwidth, roomheight, nextSafe[0], nextSafe[1]):
if trapdoor[nextSafe[0]/roomwidth][nextSafe[0]%roomwidth] is "0":
if nextSafe[0] not in safezone:
safezone.append(nextSafe[0])
e=0
while e in givenSteps(roomwidth,nextSafe[0],True):
if knownSafe(roomwidth, roomheight, e, nextSafe[0]):
if trapdoor[e/roomwidth][e%roomwidth] is "0" and (e,nextSafe[0]) not in safetiles:
safetiles.append((e,nextSafe[0]))
e+=1
i += 1
m+=1
return sorted(safezone)
thanks for any advice or help!
No, your code isn't identical.
While they look similar, for item in list and while item in list will do wildly different things.
for item in list is a syntactic way of saying for every item in the list - do something with is.
while item in list is different - a while loop iterates as long as the condition is true. The condition in this case being item in list. It doesn't update the item each iteration and if you never change what item or list are, it might never terminate. Additionally, if any given item isn't in the list it may terminate prematurely.
If you want to iterate through a list and keep a count, using while is the wrong way to go about it. Use the enumerate() function instead.
enumerate() takes a list, and returns a list of tuples, with each item from the list in order with its index, like so:
for i,m in enumerate(hazardflr):
safetiles.append((m,step))
This small change means you no longer have to track your indices manually.
If you are iterating through every item in a list in Python - use for that's what it is designed to do.
It depends on exactly what givenSteps returns, but in general, no. for x in foo evaluates foo once and then assigns x to be each element of foo in turn. while x in foo: ... x += 1, on the other hand, evaluates foo on every iteration and will end early if foo is not a contiguous sequence. For example, if foo = [0, 1, 2, 5, 6], for will use every value of foo, but while will end after 2, because 3 is not in foo. while will also differ from for if foo contains any non-integral values or values below the starting value.
while aList:
m= hazardflr.pop()
# ...
should be roughly equivelent to your other loop

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