How to find min/ max value and create a list (python)

Question

Please ignore my un-used import!

I tried to create a list to find min and max of "pa_walk" but I just could figure how to do it, everytime I tried it said error.

import random
from math import sqrt
from math import hypot
import statistics


random.seed(20190101)

def takeOnePaStep():
    direction = random.randint(0,3)
    if direction == 0:
        return (0,1)
    elif direction == 1:
        return (1,0)
    elif direction == 2:
        return (0,-1)
    elif direction == 3:
        return (-1,0)


def randomWalkPa(steps):
    pa = [0,0]
    for _ in range (steps):
        nextStep = takeOnePaStep()
        pa[0] += nextStep[0]
        pa[1] += nextStep[1]
    pasDistance = hypot(pa[0],pa[1])
    return pasDistance

 #   paMean = statistic.mean(distance)

steps = int(input("Please enter the number of steps: "))
tries = int(input("How many times should I perform the experiment? "))

for _ in range(tries):
    pa_walk= randomWalkPa(steps)
    print(pa_walk)

float object cannot be interpreted as an integer – Gwen L. Apr 16 '20 at 06:35 — Gwen L., Apr 16 '20 at 06:35

Björn · Accepted Answer · 2020-04-16T06:37:16.527

I gues it is because your function randomWalkPa(steps) returns a float of the distance, that's why you first need to create a list (in the example below I just made pa_walk a list. In your for-loop just .append the distance for every try to that list. Finally you can call the built-in functions max()and min() to get the maximum and minimum distance. I unindented the print commands for the min and max call to just get the results once

pa_walk = []
for _ in range(tries):
    pa_walk.append(randomWalkPa(steps))

print(f"The Maximum Distance reached was: {max(pa_walk)}, in trial: {pa_walk.index(max(pa_walk))}")
print(f"The Minimum Distance reached was: {min(pa_walk)}, in trial: {pa_walk.index(min(pa_walk))}")

After recommendation in the comments here is the full code (I changed nothing but the last 5 rows)

import random
from math import sqrt
from math import hypot
import statistics


random.seed(20190101)

def takeOnePaStep():
    direction = random.randint(0,3)
    if direction == 0:
        return (0,1)
    elif direction == 1:
        return (1,0)
    elif direction == 2:
        return (0,-1)
    elif direction == 3:
        return (-1,0)


def randomWalkPa(steps):
    pa = [0,0]
    for _ in range (steps):
        nextStep = takeOnePaStep()
        pa[0] += nextStep[0]
        pa[1] += nextStep[1]
    pasDistance = hypot(pa[0],pa[1])
    return pasDistance

 #   paMean = statistic.mean(distance)

steps = int(input("Please enter the number of steps: "))
tries = int(input("How many times should I perform the experiment? "))

pa_walk = []
for _ in range(tries):
    pa_walk.append(randomWalkPa(steps))

print(f"The Maximum Distance reached was: {max(pa_walk)}, in trial: {pa_walk.index(max(pa_walk))}")
print(f"The Minimum Distance reached was: {min(pa_walk)}, in trial: {pa_walk.index(min(pa_walk))}")

Edit:
A minor thing to note, in python it is convention to use underscores rather than camelcase. This means the function randomWalkPa() would be better called random_walk_pa(). This is not necessary to make the code work and totally up to you

You might want to put the full code, the one posting the question doesn't seem to be experienced in python — Ardiya, Apr 16 '20 at 06:37

How to find min/ max value and create a list (python)

1 Answers1