[Tutor] Need help w/ a for loop

[Monte Milanuk]

Hello all,

New guy here, so go easy on me ;)

I'm starting to work my way through Python Programming by Zelle, and have hit a bit of a wall on one of the programming exercises in Chapter 3 (#15 if anyone has the book handy).  

What the question ask is:  Write a program that approimates the value of pi by summing the terms of this series: 4/1 - 4/3 + 4/5 - 4/7 + 4/9 - 4/11+...  The program should ask the user for 'n', the number of terms to sum, and then output the sum of the first 'n' terms of this series.

Where I am running into problems is how to do the '-' & '+', depending on the value of 'n'.  i.e. if 'n' = 3, it's going to be a - & an +, if 'n' =5 its going to be -, +, -, +, etc.  How to make that work in terms of an algorithm is making my head hurt (and its so early in the book yet... ;) )

Here's what I have thus far:

#   approximate_pi.py
#   Approximates the value of 'pi' by summing the terms of a series.
#

import math

def main():
    print "This program will approximate the value of pi"
    print "to a degree determined by the user. "
    print

    #  get the value of n from the user
    n = input("How many terms do you want me to sum?  ")
    print

    #  create a loop from 1 to n+1, odd)
    for i in range(1,n + 1,2):
        #  each term is '4/i' as it steps thru the loop starting with 1
        x = 4 / i
        #  not sure where to go from here

        
    print
    #  output the sum - convert it to a float just in case
    print "The sum of the numbers you entered is", (float(sum))

    #  calculate the difference between our approximation and Python's pi
    diff = sum - math.pi

    #  output the difference
    print
    print "The difference between your 'pi' & Python's pi is", diff, "."

    

main()


Any assistance or nudges in the right direction would be most appreciated.

Thanks,

Monte
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/tutor/attachments/20081022/fc3e79c5/attachment.htm>