Section 27.1 The Need for Lists
Up until now, most of the data we have worked with we have thought about as single values: The number 34.2, or the word “Hello”, or a Turtle, or an Image. We have used multiple pieces of data in programs - we might work with a first and last name, or an hours_worked and pay_rate - but those pieces of data were usually given separate names.
Often, we want to work with a group of values that are all related. Say I want to work with the scores a student has gotten on a series of eight quizzes. If I name each score separately (
quiz1, quiz2, …) it will be hard to write code that does something like find the highest score. I would end up having to do like this:highest_score = quiz1
if quiz2 > highest_score:
highest_score = quiz2
if quiz3 > highest_score:
highest_score = quiz3
if quiz4 > highest_score:
highest_score = quiz4
Remember that in programming, we want to avoid writing the same code over and over. And that is what this is… I am doing the same steps over and over, just with the different variables. What I need is a way to lump all the quizzes together so I can talk about them all at once and more easily write code to work with all the individual scores.
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