On RP3 Q4, I get everything right but the total. I only get the number of students from the last section.

Question

Here is the part of my code:

 totStudents=0
    for num in range(1,numSections+1):
        numStudents=int(input("Number of students in section " + str(num) +":"))
        totStudents=numStudents

The problem is that the "totStudents" gets overwritten every loop, so I can't figure out how to add up the total.

Answer 1

That's right -- for the accumulator pattern, it's important that you update the value of the accumulator variable (totStudents) each time through the loop, but you don't just want to set it to be EQUAL to the current number of students. You want to assign it to whatever it was before (totStudents) PLUS the new number of students, so that it accumulates more students each time through the loop.

In the example from class, we did

for i in range(...):
    theSum = theSum + i * i    

where i was the FOR loop variable going through the range of odd numbers.

Or alternatively, if we used odd as the FOR loop variable, then:

for odd in range(...):
    oddSquared = odd * odd
    theSum = theSum + oddSquared

Comments

Hi,
I think Dr.Forrest Stonedahl gave the appropriate answer and i don't have anything to add on that!!