Python Collections Course

Question

I'm stuck again at another code challenge it seems that my problem is I can't think of ways how to do these challenges and I often need to look up the answer for help on the forums. In Python basics I understood everything and could do it no problem but for collections I find myself stuck at challenges for hours before looking up the answer. I'm not sure what to do I know what these things do it's just I can't think of a way how to do them.

For this challenge I understand I must make an iterable and set an integer then pick a random choice from that iterable 'integer' amount of times but I'm stuck. I don't know how to do that. And It's frustrating me to no end

Should I just leave Python for now and try to do another course that will maybe help me maybe understand programming logic and help develop these algorithms? What can I do to get a better grasp on what's going on?

choices.py

Answer 1 · 2016-01-06T16:51:31Z

January 6, 2016 4:51pm

Hi Darrian,

Don't get frustrated. Kenneth Love makes his challenges very challenging. He generally asks you to do something that wasn't completely covered. I've found it best to go to the documentation, and play around with my code locally, (or in workspaces). I get better error messages than "bummer" this way. For this challenge, you want to import random, create your function, make an empty list, and a counter variable, then do a while loop and increment the counter until it reaches the integer passed in when the function is called. Append a random item from the iterable that is passed in to the empty list you made, then return the list. e.g.

import random
def nchoices(my_iter, my_int):
  i = 0
  my_list = []
  while i < my_int:
    my_list.append(random.choice(my_iter))
    i += 1
  return my_list

When working locally, I also made a variable calling the function and print it to see what's going on. e.g.

import random
def nchoices(my_iter, my_int):
  i = 0
  my_list = []
  while i < my_int:
    my_list.append(random.choice(my_iter))
    i += 1
  return my_list

new_list = nchoices([1, 2, 3, 4,5, 6], 4)
print(new_list)

Answer 2 · 2016-01-06T17:08:05Z

January 6, 2016 5:08pm

awesome thank you. I do use workspaces to try code for better error messages, but I've noticed ill go through trial and error trying to work on a challenge forever and when I see how simple the answer is (like yours) I realize i make things harder than they should be

ill continue with the course getting stuck on these challenges and hopefully it will all come to me in time

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darrian thomas

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Python Collections Course

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Seth Reece

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