PYTHON PROGRAMMING Week 6 - Tuesday

WHAT’S AN ALGORITHM?

LAST WEEK Functions  Defining functions  Parameters  Why bother? Algorithms  Designing algorithms  Stepwise refinement

REMINDERS Pen portraits – Bradley, Malik Update targets based on assignment and check existing targets  John to go through targets individually Elvis – set up on Edmodo Bradley – assignment 1 MT2 – Cris, Bethany

TODAY Algorithms  Solve problems using top down development and stepwise refinement Python  Writing functions with and without parameters  Calling functions with arguments  Some library/built in functions

ALGORITHM – LARGEST OF THREE NUMBERS From homework: Find and display the largest of three numbers entered through the keyboard. Solve this using the four major steps method. (Taken from textbook p. 22) Class activity – get an algorithm on the IWB we are ALL happy with! Now write the program….

ALGORITHM DESIGN Top down design – hierarchy chart for quadratic equation solver  Activity – Topic 1.2 Stepwise refinement  Activity – sum and average

PRACTICAL Codecademy:  Functions Plus  Exercises  Challenges

RECAP What is top down design? What is stepwise refinement? What are the four major steps used in computer based problem solving? What is the difference between and argument and a parameter.

TOMORROW More on algorithms Functions – practice Assignment 2

HOMEWORK Read through Topic 1.2 and make some notes