Question

In exercise 1.8 how do you convert a fraction into a decimal using a for loop? I was somewhat able to do it by getting the indexes without using a loop, but there has to be a better way!

Answer 1

Step 1. Go to the MIT OCW course page for 6.189 here:
http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-computer-science/6-189-a-gentle-introduction-to-programming-using-python-january-iap-2011/
Step 2. Go into the PDF for Written Excercises
Step 3. Write a loop to count from 2 to 10 for the number on the bottom of the fraction

for n in range (2,11):

Step 4: In the body of the loop, print the fraction in decimal form

print 1.0/n

That should do it. To make it more explicit what is happening, it could be coded like this too:

print 1.0/float(n)

To actually do the division doesn't require us to write a for loop, fortunately, since python knows how to do that without our involvement!

Answer 2

Thank you so much!!!!! I really appreciate it!!