INTRODUCTION TO

COMPUTER AND PROGRAMMING

SESSION 4

1
CONTENT
1. Data & Error Types, Debugging and String Formatting
2.
3.

Introduction to Computer and Programming 2

Python: Data Types
• Python needs to know how to set aside memory in your computer based
on what kind of information you want to store.

• There are three basic types of data that we will be working with during
the first half of the term
• Strings (character-based data)
• Numbers
• Logical Values (True / False)

Introduction to Computer and Programming 3

Python: Numeric Data Types
• Integers
• Whole numbers that do not contain a decimal point
• Abbreviated as “int” in Python
• Example: 5, -5, 100, 10032
• Floating Point Numbers
• Numbers that contain a decimal point
• Abbreviated as “float” in Python
• Example: 5.0, -5.0, 100.99, 0.232132234

Introduction to Computer and Programming 4

Python: Numeric Data Types
• You can store numeric data inside variables that you create.
• Example:
num_1 = 5 # this is an int
num_2 = 4.99 # this is a float
• Keep in mind that you do not use separators or symbols when storing
numeric data. Example:
num_3 = $5,123.99 # error!

Introduction to Computer and Programming 5

Python: Numeric Data Types
• Python is not a strictly typed language. This means that you don’t need to
pre-declare what kind of data your variables.

• This is also called “dynamic typing”.

Introduction to Computer and Programming 6

Python: Numeric Data Types

Introduction to Computer and Programming 7

Python: Numeric Data Types
• Strictly Typed Languages – Examples

Introduction to Computer and Programming 8

User input and Math Expressions
• We can capture input from the user (via the input() function) and use that
input in our calculations
• However, the input() function “returns” a string – this means that the data
type that “comes out” of the input() function is a series of printed
characters
• We need to convert the result of the input function from a string into one
of the two numeric data types that Python supports (float and int)

Introduction to Computer and Programming 9

The float() and int() functions
• float() and int() are data type conversion functions. They each take one
argument and convert that argument into the specified data type.
• Example:
# ask the user for their monthly salary
monthly_salary = input(‘how much do you make in a month?’)
# convert the salary into a float
monthly_salary_float = float(monthly_salary)
# calculate the yearly salary
yearly_salary = monthly_salary_float * 12
# print the result
print(‘that means you make’, yearly_salary, ‘in a year’)

Introduction to Computer and Programming 10

Nesting data type conversions
• In the previous example we performed our data type conversion in two
lines
• We could have done that in a single line using a technique called
“nesting”
• Example:
• mynum = float( input(‘give me a number!’) )

Introduction to Computer and Programming 11

Nesting data type conversions

Introduction to Computer and Programming 12

Programming Challenge
• Ask the user for two numbers.
• You can assume they will be floating point numbers.
• Compute the following and print it out to the user:
• The sum of the numbers
• The product of the numbers (nhân)
• The difference between the numbers
• The first number divided by the second number

Introduction to Computer and Programming 13

Errors, Bugs and Debugging
• The Software Error:
Software errors are flaws that result in an inaccurate or unexpected
outcome from a computer program or system or cause it to act in ways that
were not intended

Introduction to Computer and Programming 14

Errors, Bugs and Debugging
• Mechanical Malfunctions:
“It has been just so in all of my
inventions. The first step is an
intuition, and comes with a burst,
then difficulties arise— this thing
gives out and [it is] then that 'Bugs'
— as such little faults and difficulties
are called—show themselves and
months of intense watching, study
and labor are requisite before
commercial success or failure is
certainly reached.”
- Thomas Edison, 1878
Introduction to Computer and Programming 15
Errors, Bugs and Debugging
• “Debugging” - 1947,
Harvard Mark II
Computer

Introduction to Computer and Programming 16

Errors, Bugs and Debugging
• “Debugging” –
De-bugging a program is
the process of finding
and resolving errors.

Introduction to Computer and Programming 17

Errors, Bugs and Debugging
• Types of Errors:
• Syntax errors: The code does not follow the rules of the language;
for example, a single quote is used where a double quote is needed;
a colon is missing; a keyword is used as a variable name.
• Runtime errors: In this case, your code is fine but the program does
not run as expected (it “crashes”). For example, if your program is
meant to divide two numbers, but does not test for a zero divisor, a
run-time error would occur when the program attempts to divide by
zero.
• Logic errors: These can be the hardest to find. In this case, the
program is correct from a syntax perspective; and it runs; but the
result is unanticipated or outright wrong. For example, if your
program prints “2+2 = 5” the answer is clearly wrong
Introduction to Computer and Programming 18
Errors, Bugs and Debugging
• Example Errors:
print(“hello, world!’)

SyntaxError: EOL while scanning string literal

Introduction to Computer and Programming 19

Errors, Bugs and Debugging
• Example Errors:

Introduction to Computer and Programming 20

Errors, Bugs and Debugging
• Example Errors:

Introduction to Computer and Programming 21

Debugging Techniques:
Basic Debugging Techniques
• Set small, incremental goals for your program. Don’t try and write large
programs all at once.
• Stop and test your work often as you go. Celebrate small successes
• Use comments to have Python ignore certain lines that are giving you
trouble
• Use the print() function to display values of variables

Introduction to Computer and Programming 22

Debugging Techniques:
Debugger
A debugger or debugging tool is a computer program used to test and
debug other programs (the "target" program).
The main use of a debugger is to run the target program under controlled
conditions that permit the programmer to track its execution and monitor
changes in computer resources that may indicate malfunctioning code

Introduction to Computer and Programming 23

Debugging Techniques:
Python Tutor: Learn Python, JavaScript, C, C++, and Java programming by
visualizing code

pythontutor.com
Introduction to Computer and Programming 24
Advanced Math Operations
Division Operations:
• Python contains two different division operators
• The “/” operator is used to calculate the floating-point result
of a division operation
• The “//” operator is used to calculate the integer result of a
division operation (essentially throwing away the remainder). This operation
will always round down.
• Most times you will use the floating-point division operator (“/”)

Introduction to Computer and Programming 25

Advanced Math Operations
Division Operations:
print(5/2) # 2.5
print(5//2) # 2
print(-5/2) # -2.5
print(-5//2) # -3

Introduction to Computer and Programming 26

Advanced Math Operations
Division Operations:
print(5/2) # 2.5
print(5//2) # 2
print(-5/2) # -2.5
print(-5//2) # -3

Introduction to Computer and Programming 27

Advanced Math Operations
Order of Operations:
• Python supports the
standard order of
operations (PEMDAS)
• You can use parenthetical
notation inside your math
expressions to group
operations

Introduction to Computer and Programming 28

Advanced Math Operations
Exponents:
• You can raise any number to a power by using the “**” operator.
• Example: 24
2 ** 4

Introduction to Computer and Programming 29

Advanced Math Operations
Remainder Operator (modulo):
• The modulo operator (“%”) returns the remainder portion of a division
operation
• Example:
5/2 # 2.5
5%2 # 1

Introduction to Computer and Programming 30

Advanced Math Operations
Programming Challenge: Time Calculations
Ask the user to input a number of seconds as a whole number.
Then express the time value inputted as a combination of minutes and
seconds.
Example:
Enter seconds: 110
That’s 1 minute and 50
seconds

Introduction to Computer and Programming 31

Advanced Math Operations
Converting Math Formulas into Programming Statements.
Most math formulas need to be converted into a format that Python can
understand before they can be evaluated

Introduction to Computer and Programming 32

Advanced Math Operations
Programming Challenge: Investment Planning
In this exercise you will ask the user to input the following values
• How much money they want to generate
• An interest rate value
• How long they’d like to invest their money
Calculate how much they will need as an initial investment
Example:
You will need ______ dollars to generate ______ dollars at ______
% over _____ years.

Introduction to Computer and Programming 33

Advanced Math Operations
Programming Challenge: Investment Planning

Introduction to Computer and Programming 34

Advanced Math Operations
Mixed Type Expressions
• Python allows you to mix ints and floats when performing calculations.
• The result of a mixed-type expression will evaluate based on the
operands used in the expression

Introduction to Computer and Programming 35

Advanced Math Operations
Line Continuation
• Sometimes expressions can get to be very long
• You can use the “\” symbol to indicate to Python that you’d like to
continue the expression onto another line
• Example:
x = 5 + 2 / 7 \
+ 8 – 12
• This also works for print() function calls as well

Introduction to Computer and Programming 36

Formatting Output
Formatting Output with the print() function
• Line endings:
print(‘one’, end=‘’)
print(‘two’, end=‘’)

• Separating:
print(‘one’, ‘two’, sep=‘*’) # output: one*two

Introduction to Computer and Programming 37

Formatting Output
Escape Characters
• Most programming languages support an “escape character” that allows
you to perform special actions inside the confines of a delimiter.
• In Python the escape character is the “\” character.
• It causes Python to treat the next character as a “special” character – in
most cases this means that you will ignore the next character and
prevent it from interfering with your delimiter.

print('Hi, I\'m Harry Potter, your professor')

Introduction to Computer and Programming 38

Formatting Output
Escape Characters
• There are a number of special characters you can use in conjunction with
the escape character to perform special string operations.
• Example: “\n” – forces a line break.
• print(‘line 1\nline 2\nline 3\n’)
# line 1
# line 2
# line 3

Introduction to Computer and Programming 39

Formatting Output
Escape Characters
• Example – “\t” – forces a tab:
x = 5
y = 4
print('X', '\t', 'Y', '\t', 'X*Y’)
print(x, '\t', y, '\t', x*y)

X Y X*Y
5 4 20

Introduction to Computer and Programming 40

Formatting Output
Programming Challenge:
- Write a program that asks the user to enter in 3 products and 3 prices.
- Format your output to look like the following:

Product Price
product1 price1
product2 price2
product3 price3

Introduction to Computer and Programming 41

Formatting Output
String Concatenation:
• You can’t “add” strings together, but you can “concatenate” them into a
single compound string
• Example:
a = input(‘first name’)
b = input(‘last name’)
c = b + ‘,’ + a
print(c)

Introduction to Computer and Programming 42

Formatting Output
String Repetition:
• You can also “multiply” a string by an integer value to produce a larger
string
• Example:
lyrics = 'Fa ' + 'La ' * 8
print(lyrics)

# Fa La La La La La La La La

Introduction to Computer and Programming 43

Formatting Strings
The format() function
• The format() function can be used to format a string before you decide to
print it out to the user

• format() takes two arguments – a string and a formatting pattern

(expressed as a string)

• format() returns a string which can be treated like any other string (i.e.
you can print it out immediately, store its value in a variable, etc)

Introduction to Computer and Programming 44

Formatting Strings
The format() function
• The first argument passed to the format function is the item that you wish
to format
• The second argument passed to the function is the formatting “pattern”
you wish to apply to this item
• This pattern varies based on what you would like to do to the item in
question
• Once the pattern is applied to the item the format function will return a
string version of your item with the formatting pattern applied

Introduction to Computer and Programming 45

Formatting Strings
The format() function
• One common use of string formatting is to generate a string that contains
a known # of characters
• For example, say you have the strings “Harry” and “Computer Science”.
You might want to generate output that looks like the following given
these items:
Name Department
Harry Computer Science
• In this case we need to ensure that the strings “Name” and “Harry” are
the same width so that the strings that come after them (“Department”
and “Computer Science”) line up correctly.
Introduction to Computer and Programming 46
Formatting Strings
The format() function
• You can use the format() function to “pad” a string with extra spaces at
the beginning or the end of the string.
• For example:
x = format(‘Harry’, ‘<20s’)
• This will generate a new string (x) that contains the string ‘Harry’ plus 15
spaces at the end of the string. The total length of the string in this case
will be 20 characters.
• The ‘<‘ character in the formatting pattern tells Python to left justify the
string and place the extra spaces at the end of the new string.

Introduction to Computer and Programming 47

Formatting Strings
The format() function
• You can also have Python right justify the string and place the spaces at
the beginning of the new string by doing the following:
b = format(‘Harry’, ‘>20s’)

Introduction to Computer and Programming 48

Formatting Strings
The format() function
• You can also have Python right justify the string and place the spaces at
the beginning of the new string by doing the following:
b = format(‘Harry’, ‘>20s’)

x = “Hello, World!”
y = format(x, ‘>20s’)
print(x)
>> Hello, World!
print(y)
>> Hello, World!

Introduction to Computer and Programming 49

Formatting Numbers
The format() function
• The format() function can also be used to generate a printable string
version of a float or integer number
• format() takes two arguments – a number and a formatting pattern
(expressed as a string)
• format() returns a string which can be treated like any other string (i.e.
you can print it out immediately, store its value in a variable, etc)

Introduction to Computer and Programming 50

Formatting Numbers
Limiting decimal precision
a = 1/6
print (a) # 0.16666666666666666
b = format (a, '.2f’)
print (b) # 0.17

Introduction to Computer and Programming 51

Formatting Numbers
Formatting patterns
a = 10000/6
b = format(a, ‘.2f’) # format a as a 2 digit float
c = format(a, ‘.5f’) # format a as a 5 digit float
d = format(a, ‘,.5f’) # 5 digit float + comma separators
e = format(a, ‘>20,.2f’) # 2 digit float, commas + 20
character minimum field width,
justified to the right

Introduction to Computer and Programming 52

Formatting Numbers
Formatting Percentages
a = 0.52
print(format(a, '%’)) # 52.000000%
print(format(a, '.2%’)) # 52.00%
print(format(a, ‘.0%’)) # 52%

Introduction to Computer and Programming 53

Formatting Numbers
Formatting Integers

a = 20000
print(format(a, ',d’)) # 20,000
print(format(a, ’>20,d’)) # 20,000

Introduction to Computer and Programming 54

Programming Challenge
Write a program that generates the 2 times table, like this:
Number 1 Number 2 N1 * N2
2 1 2
2 2 4
2 3 6
2 4 8

Introduction to Computer and Programming 55

New Formatting - F-strings
• Works for Python 3.6 and up—keep using format() for any Python
version lower
• Behavior is very similar to the format function
• Fewer arguments to write
• Expressions(s) enclosed using curly braces
• Expressions evaluated and converted to string representation
• Results interpolated into original string
• Slightly faster than format()

Introduction to Computer and Programming 56

New Formatting - F-strings
• format() versus f-strings

Introduction to Computer and Programming 57

New Formatting - F-strings
Arithmetic Expressions & Multiline f-strings
>>> quantity = 6
>>> item = 'bananas'
>>> price = 1.74
>>> print(f'Price per item is ${price/quantity}')
Price per item is $0.29

Introduction to Computer and Programming 58

New Formatting - F-strings
Arithmetic Expressions & Multiline f-strings
>>> name = ”Dr. Tyson”
>>> profession = ”Assc Director - Senior Data Scientist"
>>> affiliation = ”Moody’s Analytics"
>>> message = f"Hi {name}. " \
f"You are a {profession}. " \
f"You are at {affiliation}."
>>> message
Hi Dr. Tyson. You are a Assc Director - Senior Data Scientist. You are at Moody’s
Analytics.

Introduction to Computer and Programming 59

New Formatting - F-strings
Formatting Numbers
• General Pattern
f’{<expr>:<format_specifier>}’
• Example
>>> val = 12.5
>>> print(f'{val:.2f}’) # outputs?
>>> print(f'{val:.5f}')

Introduction to Computer and Programming 60

New Formatting - f-strings
f-String Expression Limitations
• f-string expression cannot be empty
>>> f'foo{}bar’
File "<stdin>", line 1 SyntaxError: f-string: empty expression not
allowed
• f-string expressions cannot have backslashes in them
>>> print(f'foo{\n}bar’)
File "<stdin>", line 1 SyntaxError: f-string expression part cannot
include a backslash
• Triple-quoted f-strings cannot have comments in them

Introduction to Computer and Programming 61

Programming Challenge
• Ask the user for two numbers.
• You can assume they will be floating point numbers.
• Compute the following and print it out to the user:
• The sum of the numbers
• The product of the numbers (nhân)
• The difference between the numbers
• The first number divided by the second number

Introduction to Computer and Programming 62

Advanced Math Operations
Programming Challenge: Time Calculations
Ask the user to input a number of seconds as a whole number.
Then express the time value inputted as a combination of minutes and
seconds.
Example:
Enter seconds: 110
That’s 1 minute and 50
seconds

Introduction to Computer and Programming 63

Advanced Math Operations
Programming Challenge: Investment Planning
In this exercise you will ask the user to input the following values
• How much money they want to generate
• An interest rate value
• How long they’d like to invest their money
Calculate how much they will need as an initial investment
Example:
You will need ______ dollars to generate ______ dollars at ______
% over _____ years.

Introduction to Computer and Programming 64

Advanced Math Operations
Programming Challenge: Investment Planning

Introduction to Computer and Programming 65

Formatting Output
Programming Challenge:
- Write a program that asks the user to enter in 3 products and 3 prices.
- Format your output to look like the following:

Product Price
product1 price1
product2 price2
product3 price3

Introduction to Computer and Programming 66