Hi Pythonistas
I am having difficulty with applying the list.append(x) method to
produce a list that will contain outputs which will become coordinates
for a later call to Matplotlib. Perhaps someone here can help me figure
this out?
The basic program is below:
# St Petersburg Game: v. 2:
# Toss a coin. If it is heads, win $2, if not keep
# tossing it until it falls heads.
# Heads first toss = H = $2
# Heads third toss = TTH = $8
# Heads fifth toss = TTTTH = $32
# The game is to win more by not scoring Heads
print """St Petersburg Game: win multiples of $2 the
more you land Tails"""
# Required libraries
import random
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
#Main function:
def flipCoin():
coinToss = random.randrange(1, 3)
return coinToss
# Storage of output
toss_list = []
# Get things going
flipCoin()
# Want to capture the coin lands heads (2)
while flipCoin() != 2:
toss_list.append("Tails")
flipCoin()
# Heads lands & show output
print
print "Heads"
print toss_list
# Interpret results & 'reward'
print "You flipped %d tails before landing Heads" % len(toss_list)
if toss_list == 0:
print "You won $2"
else:
toss_list.append( "Tail" )
print "You won $%d" % 2 ** len(toss_list)
The overall purpose of the game is, for this discussion, irrelevant, but
some background info will be helpful I think. The above program will
give one run only and produces the output I expect. When I take this to
the next level of complexity I run into problems.
1. I have tried to make this program run a given number of times, and
use the for repetition loop to do this, basically:
for i in range( 0, 10 ):
and then the above program is appropriately indented.
2. Collecting the number of coin "tosses" into a list appends these to a
list just fine. However, what this does is adds the numbers together so
that one ends up like this:
[0, 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, 11, 15]
With a corresponding increase in the values derived from multiplying the
exponent, thus:
[2, 4, 8, 32, 64, 128, 512, 2048, 4096, 65536]
Both are correct applications of the method, but I am unable to get the
list to not sum the values up in the first list, these are not
accumulative values, but discrete. If I am understanding what is
currently happening, the values are being accumulated, and I want to
stop that from happening.
If this isn't clear, please let me know how I can clarify my question to
help shape the relevance of the responses.
Thanks for any ideas.
AG
_______________________________________________
Tutor maillist - Tutor@python.org
To unsubscribe or change subscription options:
http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/tutor
