Declaring an array of a specific size?

[Alex]

> how would a newbie such as I am, have found this?

Well, you could read the documentation at python.org.  There is rather a
lot of it, though.  The documentation for the Numeric package is at
numpy.sourceforge.net.  I don't think I ever read about the '24 * [0]'
thing, I just tried it on the command line at one point, because it
seemed natural.

I'm something of a newbie myself.

Alex.