Question

Stuck on PS8, Problem 2. Question is: Do you convert the subjects dictionary into a list before applying the optimization algorithms? If not, how do you find the subject name (the dictionary key), based on the (work, value) pair (the dictionary value)?

Answer 1

[key for key, value in dictionary.iteritems() if value == (work, value)]
should return a list of keys whose values meet the criteria.

you get to decide whether to work with the dictionary or with lists. there are a number of ways to solve these.

if you use dictionary methods to get lists of the keys and values, the order of the two lists are guaranteed to be maintained
http://docs.python.org/library/stdtypes.html#dict.items

Answer 2

If you decide to generate a list of subject keys, an easy way is:
subject_list = subjects.keys()