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Python Python Collections (Retired) Dictionaries Word Count

Posted by Daniel Abbott
Daniel Abbott
16,780 Points

I seriously don't understand 2 things. 1) what is the point of the IF statement and 2) what am I doing wrong?

def word_count(string):
  words = string.lower()
  word_dict = {}
  for word in words.split():
    if word in word_dict[word]:
      word_dict[word] += 1
    else:
      word_dict[word] = 1
  return word_dict[word]

there's my code

2 Answers

Chris Shaw
Chris Shaw
26,676 Points
Chris Shaw
Chris Shaw
26,676 Points

Hi Daniel,

  1. The IF statement is required so we can determine whether the key word exists in the dictionary already, if it doesn't we refer to the else statement instead of set the key with a value of 1 by default, if that key does exist then we simply increment the value by 1 using the += operator which is a shortcut in Python and many other languages.

  2. Your return statement is incorrect, you want to be returning just word_dict but instead you have word_dict[word] which will just return a single value and not the entire dictionary.

def word_count(string):
  words = string.lower()
  word_dict = {}
  for word in words.split():
    if word in word_dict:
      word_dict[word] += 1
    else:
      word_dict[word] = 1
  return word_dict
Jason Anello
PLUS
Jason Anello
Courses Plus Student 94,610 Points
Jason Anello
Jason Anello
Courses Plus Student 94,610 Points

Hi Daniel,

The purpose of the if condition is to find out if that particular word has already been added as a key in the dictionary.

As mentioned in the comments, it should be if word in dict

Your condition should be if word in word_dict

If the key already exists in the dictionary then you want to increment the value at that key, otherwise you would add that key into the dictionary and set the count at 1. That part you're doing correctly.

Lastly, you want to return the dictionary. You're trying to return the count at a particular key.