Question

I probably missed it in the lecture, but what's the round function? (for question 1 on pset 1) thnx:)

Answer 1

The round() function is used to 'round off' a floating point number.
for example say : round(1.7543754,2) would round off the result to two decimal places
In this case 1.75.
Note that this is different from truncating the digits .
round(1.7999999999,1) would be 1.8 not 1.7

Answer 2

thanks!
then I have (at least) a couple more principal problems. here's my sort of first shot:
x = float(raw_input('Enter the outstanding balance on your credit card: '))
y = float(raw_input('Enter the annual credit card interest rate as a decimal: '))
z = float(raw_input('Enter the minimum monthly payment rate as a decimal: '))
a = (z*x)
b = (a-x*y/12.0)
for i in range(1, 13):
print ('Month:' + int(i'))
print ('minimum monthly payment: ' + a)
print ('principle paid: ' + b)
round(x, 2)
round(a, 2)
round(b, 2)

the first thing i need to understand, i think, is how to iterate the algorithm and print the result of each month... any hints?

Answer 3

sorry, here's the link... http://dpaste.com/766397/
getting better...

Answer 4

@ajitnath i'm trying with a while loop instead, (with i += 1) but i think i'm completely wrong from the very beginning:)

Answer 5

Yeah kinda :) there are couple of things here :-
1. Instead of rounding off at the very end , you should round off the the result after every calculation.Say a=round(z*x,2) and b=round((a-x*y/12.0),2)
2. You should put the calculations inside the loop that way you calculate the balance,interest incurred and principle paid for every month as the principle amount decreases
take a look at this code with the while loop. If you don't get anything just ask :)
http://dpaste.com/766443/

Answer 6

actually i was way less far out than i thought:)
so IDLE computes new values simply because it necessarily changes with every "i", or because you put i += 1 at the end? (as opposed to when defining the loop)
i get syntax error for the print 'Balance'... why?? thx again!

Answer 7

and here's the script
http://dpaste.com/766513/