On Sat, Oct 29, 2011 at 8:11 AM, David Joyner <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Sat, Oct 29, 2011 at 11:09 AM, michel paul <[email protected]> wrote: > > Here's a relatively minor issue that might not be minor for someone new > to > > Sage. > > In illustrating very simple probability as > len(outcomes)/len(sample_space), > > integer division occurs, so the probability becomes 0. > > > Can you give a specific example please? > Sure - typical simple intro - throwing two dice: S = [(die1, die2) for die1 in [1..6] for die2 in [1..6]] E = [throw for throw in S if sum(throw) == 7] len(E)/len(S) will produce 0. We can very easily use 1.0*len(E)/len(S), or we can use Integer(len(E))/len(S). I prefer the latter. Either way, a student response will be, "Why do we have to do that here?" - Michel > Easy enough to correct - but it prompts discussion of why do we even have > to > > bother with that? > > In a class where we're interested also in pure bare bones Pythonic > > expression of ideas, this provides a nice example of how Python 2 and > Python > > 3 differ, but for classes not interested in programming per se, just in > > 'math', it might be seen as a glitch. > -- ================================== "What I cannot create, I do not understand." - Richard Feynman ================================== "Computer science is the new mathematics." - Dr. Christos Papadimitriou ================================== -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "sage-edu" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-edu?hl=en.
