NOOB coding help....

[Steven Bethard]

Igorati wrote:
> list = [ ] 
> a = 1 
> print 'Enter numbers to add to the list. (Enter 0 to quit.)'
> while a != 0 :
>     a = input('Number? ')
>     list.append(a)
> zero = list.index(0)
> del list[zero]
> list.sort() 

A simpler approach is to use the second form of the builtin iter 
function which takes a callable and a sentinel:

py> def getint():
...     return int(raw_input('Number? '))
...
py> numbers = sorted(iter(getint, 0))
Number? 3
Number? 7
Number? 5
Number? 2
Number? 0
py> numbers
[2, 3, 5, 7]

Note that I've renamed 'list' to 'numbers' so as not to hide the builtin 
type 'list'.

> variableMean = lambda x:sum(x)/len(x)
> variableMedian =  lambda x: x.sort() or x[len(x)//2]
> variableMode = lambda x: max([(x.count(y),y) for y in x])[1]
> s = variableMean(list)
> y = variableMedian(list)
> t = variableMode (list)

See "Inappropriate use of Lambda" in 
http://www.python.org/moin/DubiousPython.

Lambdas aside, some alternate possibilities for these are:

def variable_median(x):
     # don't modify original list
     return sorted(x)[len(x)//2]
def variable_mode(x):
     # only iterate through x once (instead of len(x) times)
     counts = {}
     for item in x:
         counts[x] = counts.get(x, 0) + 1
     # in Python 2.5 you'll be able to do
     # return max(counts, key=counts.__getitem__)
     return sorted(counts, key=counts.__getitem__, reverse=True)[0]

Note also that you probably want 'from __future__ import divsion' at the 
top of your file or variableMean will sometimes give you an int, not a 
float.

> x = (s,y,t)
> inp = open ("Wade_StoddardSLP3-2.py", "r")
> outp = open ("avg.py", "w")
> f = ("avg.py")
> for x in inp:
>     outp.write(x)
> import pickle
> pickle.dump(x, f)

If you want to save s, y and t to a file, you probably want to do 
something like:

     pickle.dump((s, y, t), file('avg.pickle', 'w'))

I don't know why you've opened Wade_StoddardSLP3-2.py, or why you write 
that to avg.py, but pickle.dump takes a file object as the second 
parameter, and you're passing it a string object, "avg.py".

>     f = open("avg.py","r")
>     avg.py = f.read()
>     print 'The Mean average is:', mean
>     print 'The Median is:', meadian
>     print 'The Mode is:', mode

     mean, median, mode = pickle.load(file('avg.pickle'))
     print 'The Mean average is:', mean
     print 'The Median is:', meadian
     print 'The Mode is:', mode

HTH,

STeVe