[Tutor] Modulus Operator ?

[Danny Yoo]

>>On Thu, Nov 19, 2015 at 1:11 PM, Ken Hammer <kfh777 at earthlink.net> wrote:
>
>>> y = 49%13
>>> print y
>>> 10
>
>>Actually, let me pretend for a moment that I don't know what the modulus
>>operator is.  Why do we get 10 here?  Can you verbalize the reason?
>
> 49 contains 13 3 times and leaves 10 to be divided.
>
>
>>Can you modify this example above to use the modulus operator with "10" on
>>the right hand side?  What do you expect it computes?  What do you see?
>
> I see these.  Is this what you mean?  In view of the third float entry I don't understand why the first two are showing me the digits of the dividend.  Why doesn't y = 49%10 deliver 4 as an answer and with 100 as the divisor why don't I get 0?
>
>>>> y = 49%10
>>>> print y
> 9
>>>> y= 49%100
>>>> print y
> 49
>>>> 49/13.0
> 3.7692307692307692



Ok, I think I might see where're you getting stuck.

You're misinterpreting what you read about the modulus operator.
Contrary to what you've read, you don't use it a single time to get
*all* the digits of the dividend all at once.  Rather, what it does do
is let you probe at the *very last* digit in the number.  In that
sense, when we're doing:

    49 % 10

What you're asking is what's left to be when we divide 49 by 10.

    49 contains 10 4 times and leaves 9 to be divided.

and that's why 49 % 10 == 9: it gives us the last, rightmost digit of
the number.


So you might be feeling a little let down.  What was it trying to say?
 I think the text was trying to say, when it talks about getting all
the digits of a number, is that you can do *repeated* uses of division
and modulus can get the individual digits.


In a sense, division and modulus are like measuring tools that allow
us to shift and probe at an object to figure out what it's made of.
To make this concrete, imagine holding something underneath a
microscope.  For our purposes, let's do this:

############
thing = 123456
############


But close your eyes for a moment: pretend for a minute that you don't
know what this "thing" looks like.  What can we do to inspect it, if
we don't want to look at it all at once?


We can probe and shift it, to inspect portions of it.

#############################
def probe(x):
     """Return the last digit of x."""
     return x % 10

def shift(x):
    """Move x a little to the right, dropping the last digit."""
    return x / 10
#############################

Here, we'll have two functions that we'll use on our thing.  But why
do we call these things "probe" and "shift"?


Because we can do things like this.  We can get the last digit...

########################
>>> probe(thing)
6
########################

And now we know that this thing ends with a 6.  And we can move the
thing around and probe again, to get the second to last digit...

########################
>>> probe(shift(thing))
5
########################

So now we know this thing looks something like "...56"


And we can repeat.  Shift the thing twice, and probe it to get the
third to the last digit...

########################
>>> probe(shift(shift(thing)))
4
########################


... and so on.


Why is this useful?  In general: there are times when we're dealing
with things that are REALLY large, things that we truly can't look at
all at once, and knowing how to deal with just things by progressively
poking and moving through it is a skill we can use to navigate through
our data.  You'll hear the term "iteration", which is essentially what
this is.  Exploring a number, using division and modulo operators,
just happens to be a really simple toy example of this in action.