another beginner game question

[Hamy Li]

Hi all

Its me again. This time I want to create a program that flips a coin 100 times
and tells you the number of heads and tails

I tried using an intentional infinite loop but it didn't turn out right
please give some advice

thanks

[elcron]

Hi all

Its me again. This time I want to create a program that flips a coin 100 times
and tells you the number of heads and tails

I tried using an intentional infinite loop but it didn't turn out right
please give some advice

thanks

Can you post some code. Use a for loop for the loop.
[code=python]
def flipCoin():
#...

for i in xrange(100):
print flipCoin()
[/code]

[Hamy Li]

Can you post some code. Use a for loop for the loop.
[code=python]
def flipCoin():
#...

for i in xrange(100):
print flipCoin()
[/code]

Well I first tried to make it print out the 100 times of coin flip

import random
tries = 1
while True:
    side = random.randrange(2)
    tries += 1
    if tries > 100:
        break

if side == 0:
    print "Heads"
elif side == 1:
    print "tails"
else:
    print "None"
print side


raw_input("\n\nPress the Enter key to exit")

but it didn't turn out so well

[bgeddy]

Well going through your code - here are some observations.

Firstly you do not accumulate the numer of heads and tails occurring so you have no count to show. Secondly, as stated, if you are simply doing something a set number of times in a loop a 'for num in xrange(loops)'
is the simplest construct.

Even if using a while loop as you have, you don't need an infinite loop and a break, in your case "while tries<=100" would be better. Then you drop the indentation so only the last side tossed will be printed and as side can only be 0 or 1 you don't need the 'else : print 'None'.

The code here may give you some ideas - I've included a dictionary, a tuple and a subscript and an augmented assignment when they're not strictly necessary to give you some things to check up on !

import random
tosses={"Heads":0,"Tails":0}
for i in xrange(100):
    tosses[("Heads","Tails")[random.randrange(2)]]+=1
print tosses

Hope this helps..

[Hamy Li]

thanks alot for you time.

and what does xrange do?

[jlm699]

and what does xrange do?

Same thing as range() only instead of returning a list it's more of an as-needed int ... it's better for memory efficiency and faster than range in loops..

[bgeddy]

I'm not sure what is this site's policy on giving URL's so I'll just say if you were to google "python411" you will find a site with loads of tutorials/books/links etc for python.

Read up as much as you can but always have a python interpreter fired up to play with ! You will learn much more by experimentation of concepts.

At the python prompt you can type :

help(xrange)

to get an idea what this does (althought you may find the information cryptic at first).

Good Luck !!

[Hamy Li]

thanks alot. The website sure helped me