Vocabulary

Iteration - Repitition of a Process
For Loop - FOR LOOP repeats a function for a set number of times; I is the number of times repeated
While Loop - The while loop is used to repeat a section of code an unknown number of times until a specific condition is met
Initialization - What sets the counter variable to a starting value. For example (var i = 0) represents an initial value of 0.
Condition - Allows the computer to know whether or not to keep repeating the loop.
increment/decrement - Modifies the counter variable after each repetition.
Indexing / List Index - The position of an element in a list, starting from 0
append, remove, pop - Various methods, append adds an element to the end, remove removes at an index, and pop removes the last item.
Elements [in a list] - An item in a list.
Nesting - Having one data type or function inside another data type or function, such as lists or loops.
array - Another name for a list, depends on the language
Key - the unique identifier associated with a value in a dictionary, such as name
Value - the data associated with a key in a dictionary, such as age
Pair - a key-value combination in a dictionary, such as a person's name + age
Mutable - the ability to be changed or modified
Tuple - an immutable ordered sequence of elements, similar to a list
Insertion - the process of adding a new key-value pair to a dictionary
Deletion - the process of removing a key-value pair from a dictionary
Keys method/keys() - a built-in Python function that returns a list of all keys in a dictionary
Values method/values() - a built-in Python function that returns a list of all values in a dictionary
Items method/items() - a built-in Python function that returns a list of all key-value pairs in a dictionary as tuples
Update method/update() - a built-in Python function that updates a dictionary with key-value pairs from another dictionary or iterable
Clear method/clear() - a built-in Python function that removes all key-value pairs from a dictionary

Questions:

Give an example of iteration.
What is the difference between a for loop and while loop? That is, when would you use a for loop and when would you use a while loop?
In the APCSP AP exam, what number do indexes start with? important to know
Are dictionaries and lists mutable?

Simulations/Interactions

Building a simulation o#r interaction using lists and iteration in VS Code can be accomplished using a few simple steps:

Define your data: First, you need to define the data that your simulation will be working with. This could be a list of numbers, a list of strings, or any other type of data that your simulation will be manipulating.
Write your simulation code: Once you have defined your data, you can start writing the code for your simulation. This code will typically involve iterating over your list of data, performing some operation on each item in the list, and updating the list accordingly.
Test your simulation: After you have written your simulation code, it is important to test it to make sure it is working as expected. You can do this by running your code and checking the output to see if it matches what you expect.
Refine your simulation: Once you have tested your simulation, you may need to refine it based on the results. This could involve tweaking the code to make it more efficient, adding new features, or fixing any bugs that you have discovered.

Why use simulations?

Simulations can be useful because they can emulate real world situations without needing excessive resources (ex: money), time, or equipment. For example, a simulation of the effectiveness of a new seatbelt or airbag can be performed by simulating car crashes. This would be better than doing it in real life because you wouldn't want to place people in cars and then crash them for obvious reasons.
However, simulatins do assume things about the real world and can have biases. They can be oversimplified because the real world often has more complications and factors that can affect something. In the case of our car crash simulation, other things can have a big impact, such as the weather and experience of the driver. However, these things can sometimes be held constant in the simulations.

Questions:

Explain an example of something you could simulate.
Why are simulations useful and important?

Here's a simple example of a simulation in Python that uses lists and iteration to calculate the average of a list of numbers:

numbers = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

# Initialize the sum and count variables
sum = 0
count = 0

# Iterate over the list of numbers, adding each number to the sum
for number in numbers:
    sum += number
    count += 1

# Calculate the average of the list of numbers
average = sum / count

# Print the average
print("The average of the list is:", average)

The average of the list is: 3.0

This code defines a list of numbers, iterates over the list to calculate the sum and count of the numbers, and then calculates the average by dividing the sum by the count. Finally, it prints the average to the console.

Lists

Iteration statements can be used to traverse a list
Knowldege of exisiting algorithms that use iteration can help in constructing new algorithms. Some are:
- Determining a minimum or maximum value in a list
- Computing a sum or average of a list of numbers

What are Lists?

Lists are _________________.
Each sequence is demarcated with an index, starting from 0. This is known as base 0 indexing
In memory, it is stored as a variable name with multiple pointers to each variable stored in a certain order
Lists can also be called arrays
Lists have methods that act upon the list and change them. This moves the pointers within RAM to change the parts of the list.

Nested Lists

Uses of Nested lists

Placing lists within lists allows you to have arrays of similar data together, and create complexity.

Some uses include:

Creating 2d Arrays
Storing similar, but slightly different categories (sublists)
Create a matrix

Iteration

Iterative statements are also called _____, and they repeat themselves over and over until the condition for stopping is met.

In College Board's Pseudocode, the first is a REPEAT n TIMES loop, where the n represents some number.

The second type of loop is a REPEAT UNTIL (condition) loop, where the loop will continue to run until a condition is met.

Conceptually, a while loop is very similar to an if conditional, except that a while is continually executed until it's no longer true and an if is only executed once.

Questions:

Describe a situation where you would need iteration.
Describe the difference between a "REPEAT n TIMES" loop VS a "REPEAT UNTIL (condition)" loop. it is important you know this for the AP Exam

Libaries

A software library contains procedures that may be used in creating new programs.
Existing code segments can come from internal or external sources, such as libaries or previously written code.
The use of libaries simplifies the task of creating complex programs.

APIs

Application program interfaces (APIs) are specifications for how the procedures in a libary behave and can be used as documentation for an API/libary is necessary in understanding the behaviors provided by the API and how to use them.

A file that contains procedures that can be used in a program is considered a libary.

API provides specifications for how procedures in a library behave and can be used.
Many companies use APIs for programmers to interact with their products.

Questions:

What are some libraries that we've learned about? What are their advantages/disadvantages?

Dictionaries

What are Dictionaries?

an unordered collection of key-value pairs, where each key is _______ and associated with a specific value
known as associative arrays, maps, or hash tables in some programming languages
used to store and retrieve data efficiently, as they allow fast access to values based on their associated keys
useful for a wide range of tasks, such as storing, indexing, and counting

What are the types of Dictionaries?

Ordered Dictionaries

Iterates over keys and values in the same order that the keys were inserted
If an entry is deleted and reinserted, then it will be moved to the end of the dictionary
Specially designed to keep its items ordered
Useful in situations where the order of insertion is important and when you need to process data in a specific order
If the order of the data is important, an ordered dictionary is the better choice

How to create an ordered dictionary?

Import OrderedDict from collections
Create an empty ordered dictionary by instantiating OrderedDict without providing arguments to the constructor
Add key-value pairs to the dictionary by providing a key in square brackets ([]) and assigning a value to that key.
Print the ordered dictionary
Iterate over the items in the ordered dictionary

Regular Dictionaries

Mutable; can add, remove, and modify key-value pairs after they have been created
Used to store data values in key:value pairs
Can be iterated over using loops
If order is not important, a regular dictionary may provide better performance

How to create a regular dictionary?

Create a variable name which will be the name of the dictionary
Assign the variable to an empty set of curly braces {}
Create a dictionary with the dict() OR empty curly brackets

Questions:

Compare and contrast lists and dictionaries.
Do dictionary keys need to be unique?

folklore_album = {
    "title": "Folklore",
    "artist": "Taylor Swift",
    "year": 2020,
    "genre": ["Alternative/Indie", "Pop"],
    "tracks": {
        1: ["the 1", 7],
        2: ["cardigan", 9],
        3: ["the last great american dynasty", 7],
        4: ["exile (ft. Bon Iver)", 10],
        5: ["my tears ricochet", 7],
        6: ["mirrorball", 6],
        7: ["seven", 5],
        8: ["august", 7],
        9: ["this is me trying", 7],
        10: ["illicit affairs", 8],
        11: ["invisible string", 6],
        12: ["mad woman", 7],
        13: ["epiphany", 6],
        14: ["betty", 8],
        15: ["peace", 9],
        16: ["hoax", 7],
        17: ["the lakes", 6]
    }
}

# Printing the dictionary
print(folklore_album)

{'title': 'Folklore', 'artist': 'Taylor Swift', 'year': 2020, 'genre': ['Alternative/Indie', 'Pop'], 'tracks': {1: ['the 1', 7], 2: ['cardigan', 19], 3: ['the last great american dynasty', 7], 4: ['exile (ft. Bon Iver)', 10], 5: ['my tears ricochet', 7], 6: ['mirrorball', 6], 7: ['seven', 5], 8: ['august', 7], 9: ['this is me trying', 7], 10: ['illicit affairs', 8], 11: ['invisible string', 6], 12: ['mad woman', 7], 13: ['epiphany', 6], 14: ['betty', 8], 15: ['peace', 9], 16: ['hoax', 7], 17: ['the lakes', 6]}}

for i in folklore_album["tracks"]:
    print("track #" + str(i) + ": " + folklore_album["tracks"][i][0])
    print("    my rating: " + str(folklore_album["tracks"][i][1]) + "/10")

track #1: the 1
    my rating: 7/10
track #2: cardigan
    my rating: 19/10
track #3: the last great american dynasty
    my rating: 7/10
track #4: exile (ft. Bon Iver)
    my rating: 10/10
track #5: my tears ricochet
    my rating: 7/10
track #6: mirrorball
    my rating: 6/10
track #7: seven
    my rating: 5/10
track #8: august
    my rating: 7/10
track #9: this is me trying
    my rating: 7/10
track #10: illicit affairs
    my rating: 8/10
track #11: invisible string
    my rating: 6/10
track #12: mad woman
    my rating: 7/10
track #13: epiphany
    my rating: 6/10
track #14: betty
    my rating: 8/10
track #15: peace
    my rating: 9/10
track #16: hoax
    my rating: 7/10
track #17: the lakes
    my rating: 6/10

Code Examples

Reverse a list utilizing features of lists and iteration

original_list = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
print("List before reverse : ",original_list)
reversed_list = []
for value in original_list:
  reversed_list = [value] + reversed_list
# print("List after reverse : ", reversed_list)

List before reverse :  [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

Similar to insertion sort, this algorithm takes an unsorted array and returns a sorted array. Unlike insertion sort where you iterate through the each element and move the smaller elements to the front, this algorithm starts at the beginning and swaps the position of every element in the array

list = [9, 8, 4, 3, 5, 2, 6, 7, 1, 0]
print(f"array before sort {list}")
def insertion_sort(list):
    for index in range(1,len(list)): # repeats through length of the array
        value = list[index]
        i = index - 1
        while i >= 0:
            if value < list[i]:
                list[i+1] = list[i] # shift number in slot i to the right
                list[i] = value # shift value left into slot i
                i = i - 1
            else:
                break

IS = insertion_sort(list)
# print(f"array after sort {list}")

array before sort [9, 8, 4, 3, 5, 2, 6, 7, 1, 0]

Here is a list comprehension example, using lists to create lists.

Below, only songs in the folklore album that have less than 7 characters in their titles are printed.

TS_folklore = ["exile", "my tears ricochet", "this is me trying", "illicit affairs", "august", "mirrorball", "betty", "mad woman", "epiphany", "peace", "cardigan"]

# this list is only songs that have less than 10 characters in the title
TS_folklore_updated = [x for x in TS_folklore if len(x) < 7]

print("These are the songs in Taylor Swift's folklore album that have less than 7 characters in their title")
print(TS_folklore_updated)

These are the songs in Taylor Swift's folklore album that have less than 7 characters in their title
['exile', 'august', 'betty', 'peace']

Below, only songs that have a rating greater than 7 will be printed.

TS_folklore_ratings = {"exile": 8, "my tears ricochet": 6, "this is me trying": 7, "illicit affairs": 8, "august": 4, "mirrorball": 3, "betty": 6, "mad woman": 6, "epiphany": 2, "peace": 10, "cardigan": 10}
TS_folklore_best = {k:v for (k,v) in TS_folklore_ratings.items() if v>7}

print("These are the songs in Taylor Swift's folklore album that I give a rating greater than 7")
print(TS_folklore_best)

These are the songs in Taylor Swift's folklore album that I give a rating greater than 7
{'exile': 8, 'illicit affairs': 8, 'peace': 10, 'cardigan': 10}

Questions:

How is list comprehension similar to iteration?

Hacks

(0.1 points) Create a visual or written description. Objective is to compare lists and dictionaries.

(0.6 points) Create your own dictionary/list and use sorting algorithms to perform operations on them. (Use playlist maker as an example of what we expect ~ Make something creative and useful)

(0.2 points) Build your own simulation such as a random number generator or slot machine (Try using a list!)