[Tutor] Summing arrays

[Peter Otten]

Aaliyah Ebrahim wrote:

> Hi guys! I hope you can assist me with understanding and fixing my error
> below. Thanks for this amazing forum :)
> 
> 
> def sum2(N):
> 
>     b = np.arange(1,N+1,1)
>     mylist = [ ]
>     for i in b:
> 
> 
>         terms = 2*(1+3**(i-1))
>         a = mylist.append[terms]

The immediate problem is that append is a method, the line above should be

    mylist.append(terms)

As the append() method always returns None the assignment a = ...
does not do anything useful and should be avoided.

>     return np.sum(mylist)
> 
> print(sum2(N=50))

However, with the fix above you will still run into overflow errors with 
your code. I suggest that you use Python's integer arithmetic and forget 
about numpy for now:

$ cat tmp1.py
import numpy as np

def sum2(N):
    b = np.arange(1,N+1,1)
    mylist = []
    for i in b:
        terms = 2*(1+3**(i-1))
        mylist.append(terms)
    return np.sum(mylist)

def sum2a(N):
    mylist = []
    for i in range(1, N+1):
        mylist.append(2*(1+3**(i-1)))
    return sum(mylist)

print("N=5:", sum2(5), sum2a(5))
print("N=50:", sum2(50), sum2a(50))
$ python3 tmp1.py
N=5: 252 252
tmp1.py:7: RuntimeWarning: overflow encountered in long_scalars
  terms = 2*(1+3**(i-1))
N=50: 6048575297968530476 717897987691852588770348

Both the numpy and the non-numpy version can be written more concisely (and 
for the numpy version the rewritten version is more efficient, too):

$ cat tmp2.py
import numpy as np

def sum2(N):
    b = np.arange(1, N+1, 1, dtype=float)
    a = 2*(1+3**(b-1))
    return a.sum()

def sum2a(N):
    return sum(2*(1+3**(i-1)) for i in range(1, N+1))

print("N=5:", sum2(5), sum2a(5))
print("N=50:", sum2(50), sum2a(50))
$ python3 tmp2.py 
N=5: 252.0 252
N=50: 7.17897987692e+23 717897987691852588770348

(Specifying dtype=float forces floating point arithmetic which is inexact)