[Tutor] Beginner's question

[Joel Goldstick]

On Thu, Nov 22, 2012 at 10:02 AM, Prasad, Ramit
<ramit.prasad at jpmorgan.com>wrote:

> 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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Oops. I sent this to Ramit, not the list.  Sorry Ramit

Here is another idea:


    x, y, z = 26, 15, 20

    largest = None
    if x %2:
         largest = x
    if y % 2:
         if y > largest:
              largest = y
    if z % 2:
         if z > largest:
              largest = z;

   if Largest:
         print "largest value is", largest
   else:
         print "no odd values"


untested

-- 
Joel Goldstick
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