On 31/12/12 10:59, Brandon Merritt wrote:
I am having trouble figuring out a solution after a couple hours now of playing with the code. I'm trying to make a latin square using the code below:scaleorder = int(raw_input('Please enter a number for an n*n square: ')) topleft = int(raw_input('Please enter the top left number for the square: ')) firstrow = range((topleft),scaleorder+1) count = 0 while count< 8: for i in firstrow: print i count += 1 firstrow[i+1] ----------------------------------------------------------------------- It seemed like I could make the for loop work by doing something like this: for i in firstrow: print i, i+2 but that obviously is not a solution either. Any ideas?
Absolutely none. I don't understand your question. What's a latin square? Is it the same as a magic square? What do you mean, "make the for loop work"? The for loop already works: it iterates over the range topleft to scaleorder inclusive. You say "that obviously is not a solution", but a solution to what? What is it supposed to do? I think that you need to think a bit more carefully about what you are trying to accomplish. Probably the most valuable piece of advice I ever received was that *writing code* should be the last thing you do when trying to solve a problem. When I have a tricky problem to accomplish, I will sometimes spend hours designing my code with pencil and paper before writing my first line of code. Can YOU solve a latin square using pen and paper? If you can't, how do you expect to write a program to do it? Start by writing down the steps that you would take to make a latin square. I suggest with starting with a fixed size, say, 5x5: * pick a number for the top left corner, say, 3 * write down the first row: 3 ? ? ? ? [you need to come up with a rule for making the row] * write down the second row: ? ? ? ? ? [again, you need to come up with a rule for making the next row] ... and so on for the other three rows. Now you have an algorithm for making 5 x 5 latin squares. Now you can write some code to do that! Once that is working, you can start thinking about changing from fixed 5 x 5 squares to arbitrary N x N sizes. -- Steven _______________________________________________ Tutor maillist - Tutor@python.org To unsubscribe or change subscription options: http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/tutor
