Lecturer: Vince Knight

Office: M1.30

email: knightva@cf.ac.uk

Office hours: Thursday 1400-1600

# What was in this lab sheet:

• Lists
• For loops and list comprehensions
• Functions

## List comprehensions

This is using a for loop to create a list of squares:

>>> squares = []
>>> for n in range(10):
...     squares.append(n ** 2)
>>> squares
[0, 1, 4, 9, 16, 25, 36, 49, 64, 81]



This is doing the same thing using a list comprehension (the above is not a list comprehension):

>>> squares = [n ** 2 for n in range(10)]
>>> squares
[0, 1, 4, 9, 16, 25, 36, 49, 64, 81]



## Translating mathematics to

Difficulties in question 6 and question 9 almost universally came from not having an understanding of what the question was trying to achieve mathematically.

Both questions were of the same form:

1. Write a function for a given mathematical expression;
2. Check another expression for the summation of the previous expression.

When working through any mathematical problem you should try and work things out for small examples by hand. This will help understand things.

For example for question 6, it would be helpful as you read the question to write down the following table:

$$n$$ $$f_n$$ $$\sum_{i=0}^n f_n$$ $$f_{n+2}$$
0 1 1 2
1 1 2 3
2 2 4 5
3 3 7 8
4 5 12 13

By doing this, you would:

• gain an underlying understanding of what the question is asking you to do
• have some insight as to the calculations required for $$f_n$$;
• have some values ready that might help with debugging.

## Make notes

Whilst watching the videos and working through the lab sheets I recommend you make your own notes. This will help with your understanding. (I recommend this for all your modules.)