Python Programming:

An Introduction to
Computer Science

Chapter 3
Computing with Numbers

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Objectives
 To understand the concept of data types in
more depth.
 To be familiar with the basic numeric data types
in Python.
 To understand the fundamental principles of
how numbers are represented on a computer.

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Objectives (cont.)
 To be able to use the Python math library.
 To understand the accumulator program
pattern.
 To be able to read and write programs that
process numerical data.

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Numeric Data Types
 The information that is stored and manipulated
by computer programs is referred to as data.
 There are two different kinds of numbers!
 (5, 4, 3, 6) are whole numbers – they don’t have a
fractional part
 (.25, .10, .05, .01) are decimal fractions

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Numeric Data Types
# [Link]
# A program to calculate the value of some change in dollars

def main():
print("Change Counter")
print()
print("Please enter the count of each coin type.")
quarters = int(input("Quarters: "))
dimes = int(input("Dimes: "))
nickels = int(input("Nickels: "))
pennies = int(input("Pennies: "))
total = quarters * .25 + dimes * .10 + nickels * .05 + pennies * .01
print()
print("The total of your change is", total)

main()

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Numeric Data Types
 Inside the computer, whole numbers and decimal
fractions are represented quite differently!
 We say that decimal fractions and whole numbers
are two different data types.
 The data type of an object determines what
values it can have and what operations can be
performed on it.

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Numeric Data Types
 Whole numbers are represented using the
integer (int for short) data type.
 These values can be positive or negative whole
numbers.

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Numeric Data Types
 Numbers that can have fractional parts are
represented as floating point (or float) values.
 How can we tell which is which?
 A numeric literal without a decimal point produces
an int value
 A literal that has a decimal point is represented by a
float (even if the fractional part is 0)

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Numeric Data Types
 Python has a special function to tell us the data type
of any value.
>>> type(3)
<class 'int'>
>>> type(3.1)
<class 'float'>
>>> type(3.0)
<class 'float'>
>>> myInt = 32
>>> type(myInt)
<class 'int'>
>>>

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Numeric Data Types
 Why do we need two number types?
 Values that represent counts can’t be fractional (you can’t
have 3 ½ quarters)
 Most mathematical algorithms are very efficient with
integers
 The float type stores only an approximation to the real
number being represented!
 Since floats aren’t exact, use an int whenever possible!

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Numeric Data Types
operato operation
r
+ addition
- subtraction
* multiplication
/ float division
** exponentiation
abs() absolute value
// integer
division
% remainder

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Numeric Data Types
 Operations on ints produce ints, operations on floats
produce floats (except for /).
>>> 3.0+4.0
7.0
>>> 3+4
7
>>> 3.0*4.0
12.0
>>> 3*4
12
>>> 10.0/3.0
3.3333333333333335
>>> 10/3
3.3333333333333335
>>> 10 // 3
3
>>> 10.0 // 3.0
3.0
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Numeric Data Types
 Division (/) produces a float, while
integer division (//) can produce a
whole number.
 That’s why 10/3 = 3.3333 while 10//3 =
3!
 Think of it as ‘gozinta’, where 10//3 = 3
since 3 gozinta (goes into) 10 3 times
(with a remainder of 1)
 10%3 = 1 is the remainder of the
integer division of 10 by 3.
 a = (a//b)(b) + (a%b)
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Type Conversions & Rounding
 We know that combining an int with an int
produces an int, and combining a float with a
float produces a float.
 What happens when you mix an int and float in
an expression?
x = 5.0 * 2
 What do you think should happen?

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Type Conversions & Rounding
 For Python to evaluate this expression, it must
either convert 5.0 to 5 and do an integer
multiplication, or convert 2 to 2.0 and do a
floating point multiplication.
 Converting a float to an int will lose information
 Ints can be converted to floats by adding “.0”

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Type Conversion & Rounding
 In mixed-typed expressions Python will convert
ints to floats.
 Sometimes we want to control the type
conversion. This is called explicit typing.
 Converting to an int simply discards the
fractional part of a float – the value is
truncated, not rounded.

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Type Conversion & Rounding
 To round off numbers, use the built-in round
function which rounds to the nearest whole
value.
 If you want to round a float into another float
value, you can supply a second parameter that
specifies the number of digits after the decimal
point.

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Type Conversions & Rounding
>>> float(22//5)
4.0
>>> int(4.5)
4
>>> int(3.9)
3
>>> round(3.9)
4
>>> round(3)
3
>>> round(3.1415926, 2)
3.14

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Type Conversions & Rounding
>>> int("32")
32
>>> float("32")
32.0
str(10)
'10'
str(10.0)
'10.0'
int("10.5")
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<pyshell#13>", line 1, in <module>
int("10.5")
ValueError: invalid literal for int() with base 10: '10.5'

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Using the Math Library
 Besides (+, -, *, /, //, **, %, abs), we have lots of
other math functions available in a math
library.
 A library is a module with some useful
definitions/functions.

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Using the Math Library
 Let’s write a program to compute the roots of a
quadratic equation!
−𝑏± √ 𝑏 − 4 𝑎𝑐
2
𝑥=
2𝑎

 The only part of this we don’t know how to do is

find a square root… but it’s in the math library!

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Using the Math Library
 To use a library, we need to make sure this line
is in our program:
import math
 Importing a library makes whatever functions
are defined within it available to the program.

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Using the Math Library
 To access the sqrt library routine, we need to
access it as [Link](x).
 Using this dot notation tells Python to use the
sqrt function found in the math library module.
 To calculate the root, you can do
discRoot = [Link](b*b – 4*a*c)

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Using the Math Library
# [Link]
# A program that computes the real roots of a quadratic equation.
# Illustrates use of the math library.
# Note: This program crashes if the equation has no real roots.

import math # Makes the math library available.

def main():
print("This program finds the real solutions to a quadratic")
print()

a = float(input("Please enter the coefficient a: "))

b = float(input("Please enter the coefficient a: "))
c = float(input("Please enter the coefficient a: "))

discRoot = [Link](b * b - 4 * a * c)
root1 = (-b + discRoot) / (2 * a)
root2 = (-b - discRoot) / (2 * a)

print()
print("The solutions are:", root1, root2 )

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Using the Math Library
This program finds the real solutions to a quadratic

Please enter the coefficient a: 3

Please enter the coefficient a: 4
Please enter the coefficient a: -1

The solutions are: 0.21525043702153024 -1.5485837703548635

 What do you suppose this means?

This program finds the real solutions to a quadratic

Please enter the coefficient a: 1

Please enter the coefficient a: 2
Please enter the coefficient a: 3
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<pyshell#15>", line 1, in <module>
main()
File "C:/Users/terry/Desktop/[Link]", line 16, in main
discRoot = [Link](b * b - 4 * a * c)
ValueError: math domain error

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Using the Math Library
 If a = 1, b = 2, c = 3, then we are trying to take
the square root of a negative number!
 Using the sqrt function is more efficient than
using **. How could you use ** to calculate a
square root?

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Using the Math Library
Python Mathematic English
s 
pi An approximation of pi
e e An approximation of e
sqrt(x) √𝑥 The square root of x
sin(x) sin x The sine of x
cos(x) cos x The cosine of x
tan(x) tan x The tangent of x
asin(x) arcsin x The inverse of sine x
acos(x) arccos x The inverse of cosine x
atan(x) arctan x The inverse of tangent x

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Using the Math Library
Python Mathematic English
s
log(x)
logln10x𝑥 The natural (base e) logarithm of x
log10(x) 𝑥 The common (base 10) logarithm of x
exp(x)
𝑒 The exponential of x
ceil(x)
⌈𝑥⌉ The smallest whole number >= x
⌊𝑥 ⌋
floor(x) The largest whole number <= x

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Accumulating Results: Factorial
 Say you are waiting in a line with five other
people. How many ways are there to arrange
the six people?
 720 -- 720 is the factorial of 6 (abbreviated 6!)
 Factorial is defined as:

 So, 6! = 6*5*4*3*2*1 = 720

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Accumulating Results: Factorial
 How we could we write a program to do this?
 Input number to take factorial of, n
Compute factorial of n, fact
Output fact

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Accumulating Results: Factorial
 How did we calculate 6!?
 6*5 = 30
 Take that 30, and 30 * 4 = 120
 Take that 120, and 120 * 3 = 360
 Take that 360, and 360 * 2 = 720
 Take that 720, and 720 * 1 = 720

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Accumulating Results: Factorial
 What’s really going on?
 We’re doing repeated multiplications, and we’re
keeping track of the running product.
 This algorithm is known as an accumulator, because
we’re building up or accumulating the answer in a
variable, known as the accumulator variable.

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Accumulating Results: Factorial
 The general form of an accumulator algorithm
looks like this:
Initialize the accumulator variable
Loop until final result is reached
update the value of accumulator variable

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Accumulating Results: Factorial
 It looks like we’ll need a loop!
fact = 1
for factor in [6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1]:
fact = fact * factor
 Let’s trace through it to verify that this works!

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Accumulating Results: Factorial
 Why did we need to initialize fact to 1? There
are a couple reasons…
 Each time through the loop, the previous value of
fact is used to calculate the next value of fact. By
doing the initialization, you know fact will have a
value the first time through.
 If you use fact without assigning it a value, what
does Python do?

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Accumulating Results: Factorial
 Since multiplication is associative and
commutative, we can rewrite our program as:
fact = 1
for factor in [2, 3, 4, 5, 6]:
fact = fact * factor
 Great! But what if we want to find the factorial
of some other number??

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Accumulating Results: Factorial
 What does list(range(n)) return?
[0, 1, 2, 3, …, n-1]
 range has another optional parameter!
range(start, n) returns
[start, start + 1, …, n-1]
 But wait! There’s more!
range(start, n, step)
[start, start+step, …, n-1]
 list(<sequence>) to make a list

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Accumulating Results: Factorial
 Let’s try some examples!
>>> list(range(10))
[0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9]
>>> list(range(5,10))
[5, 6, 7, 8, 9]
>>> list(range(5,10,2))
[5, 7, 9]

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Accumulating Results: Factorial
 Using this souped-up range statement, we can
do the range for our loop a couple different
ways.
 We can count up from 2 to n:
range(2, n+1)
(Why did we have to use n+1?)
 We can count down from n to 2:
range(n, 1, -1)

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Accumulating Results: Factorial
 Our completed factorial program:
# [Link]
# Program to compute the factorial of a number
# Illustrates for loop with an accumulator

def main():
n = int(input("Please enter a whole number: "))
fact = 1
for factor in range(n,1,-1):
fact = fact * factor
print("The factorial of", n, "is", fact)

main()

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The Limits of Int
 What is 100!?
>>> main()
Please enter a whole number: 100
The factorial of 100 is
9332621544394415268169923885626670049071596826438162146859296389
5217599993229915608941463976156518286253697920827223758251185210
916864000000000000000000000000
 Wow! That’s a pretty big number!

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The Limits of Int
 Newer versions of Python can handle it, but…
Python 1.5.2 (#0, Apr 13 1999, 10:51:12) [MSC 32 bit (Intel)] on win32
Copyright 1991-1995 Stichting Mathematisch Centrum, Amsterdam
>>> import fact
>>> [Link]()
Please enter a whole number: 13
13
12
11
10
9
8
7
6
5
4
Traceback (innermost last):
File "<pyshell#1>", line 1, in ?
[Link]()
File "C:\PROGRA~1\PYTHON~1.2\[Link]", line 5, in main
fact=fact*factor
OverflowError: integer multiplication

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The Limits of Int
 What’s going on?
 While there are an infinite number of integers, there
is a finite range of ints that can be represented.
 This range depends on the number of bits a
particular CPU uses to represent an integer value.

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The Limits of Int
 Typical PCs use 32 bits or 64.
 In a 32 bit computer there are 232 possible
values, centered at 0.
 This range then is –231 to 231-1. We need to
subtract one from the top end to account for 0.
 But our 100! is much larger than this -- even
larger than 264. How does it work?

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Handling Large Numbers
 Does switching to float data types get us
around the limitations of ints?
 If we initialize the accumulator to 1.0, we get
>>> main()
Please enter a whole number: 30
The factorial of 30 is 2.652528598121911e+32
 We no longer get an exact answer!

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Handling Large Numbers: Long Int
 Very large and very small numbers are expressed in
scientific or exponential notation.
 2.652528598121911e+32 means 2.652528598121911
* 1032
 Here the decimal needs to be moved right 32 decimal
places to get the original number, but there are only
16 digits, so 16 digits of precision have been lost.

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Handling Large Numbers
 Floats are approximations
 Floats allow us to represent a larger range of
values, but with fixed precision.
 Python has a solution, expanding ints!
 Python ints are not a fixed size and expand to
handle whatever value it holds.

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Handling Large Numbers
 Newer versions of Python automatically convert your
ints to expanded form when they grow so large as to
overflow.
 We get indefinitely large values (e.g. 100!) at the cost
of speed and memory

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