[Tutor] Beginner's question

[Prasad, Ramit]

Peter O'Doherty wrote:
>
> Hi list,
> Firstly, apologies for the low-level nature of this question - it's
> really quite basic but I don't seem to be able to solve it.
> 
> I need to write a program that examines 3 variables x, y, z, and prints
> the largest odd number. I've tried all sorts of variations and this is
> the current version:
> 
> x, y, z = 26, 15, 20
> 
> if x > y and x > z and x%2 != 0:
>      print 'x is largest and odd'
> elif y > x and y > z and y%2 != 0:
>      print 'y is largest and odd'
> elif z > x and z > y and z%2 != 0:
>      print 'z is largest and odd'
> else:
>      print 'no odd'
> 
> 
> A solution should be possible using only the simple operators and
> keywords above, no functions, lists or any other form of iteration.
> (It's from p. 16 of Introduction to Computation and Programming Using
> Python, and no, it's not "homework"!)
> 

The "smart" solution is eluding me so my inelegant solution would 
figure out what is odd for each x,y, and z. Then compare only looking
at values that are odd. Your current if statement only works if 
all values are odd, but not if the largest value is even and the 
middle (or low) value is odd. The following code snippets should
give you an idea how to create the if statement so that it works
correctly

useX = x % 2 # 1 is equivalent to True
if useX and ( ( useY and x > y ) or not useY ) # and for z:
    print 'X-izard, use largest odd value attack!', x


~Ramit


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