CS150 - Fall 2012 - Class 4
Quiz: 3.5 from the book
admin
- Lab prep 2 out today and due at the beginning of class on Friday
- CS talk tomorrow 12:30-1:30 in MBH 104:
Student talks "What I did this summer", 12:30, Pizza at 12:20
http://www.cs.middlebury.edu/~schar/dept/seminars/2012-09-20-students.pdf
Modules
- When I say the word module what does that make you think of?
- A module in python is a collection of functions and variables
- modules allow us to use code that other people have written
- For example, there is a module called "math" that has many of the math functions you might want
- We can look at the documentation for this module online by searching for "math python" or by going to docs.python.org and browsing searching there
-
http://docs.python.org/library/math.html
- logs
- sqrt
- trigonemtric functions
- constants
- If we want to use a module, we need to tell the program to include it with our program. To do this, we need to "import" it
- there are many ways of importing modules (some better than others)
- for now, we're going to import the functions and variables into our program as if they were local (i.e. just as if we'd written them in our program)
- this is convenient for now, but in general it is bad practice
- I'll soon show you a better way to do it
from math import *
- this statement has multiple components:
- "from" is a keyword
- "math" is the name of the module
- "import" meaning, load them into our program
- "*" means everything, i.e. everything in the math module
- once we've imported a module, we can then use the functions in that module
>>> log(10)
2.302585092994046
>>> sqrt(16)
4.0
>>> cos(10)
-0.8390715290764524
- notice that we just use them just like any other functions we've seen before
- in a program, the imports are generally put at the top of the program
- Python has LOTS of built-in modules and many more that you can download that other people have written
-
http://docs.python.org/library/
turtle module
- One of the modules that Python makes available is the "turtle" module
- The turtle module implements a set of commands similar to the Logo programming language
- some of you may have used Logo at some point in your schooling
-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logo_(programming_language
)
- the basic idea is that you control the movements of a turtle (in our case, it will be an arrow) through basic commands such as
- forward
- backward
- right
- left
- and many others
- As the turtle moves, it draws a line behind it, so by giving it different commands, we can draw things on the screen
- you can see the documentation for the turtle class online
-
http://docs.python.org/library/turtle.html
- you'll be getting more comfortable with this documentation as part of your lab prep
- We can import all of the function, etc. from the turtle module just like we did for the math module
from turtle import *
- Once you've done this, then we can start playing with it
>>> forward(100)
>>> right(45)
>>> forward(100)
- the right and left commands are in degrees (though you can change the mode to radians if you prefer that)
- how would we draw a square?
forward(some_length)
right(90)
forward(some_length)
right(90)
forward(some_length)
right(90)
forward(some_length)
- We can easily turn this into a function that takes the length as a parameter. For example, look at the square function in the
turtle-examples.py code
- This seems like a lot of repetitive typing. Let's say we can tell the turtle to repeat some statements, would there be a better way of creating a square (state it in English)?
- go forward some length and then turn right, repeat this 4 times
for loops in Python
- Python has a number of different "loop" structures that allow us to do repetition (remember we said that computers are good at doing repetitive tasks)
- The "for" loop is one way of doing this
- There are a number of ways we can use the for loop, but for now the basic structure we'll use is:
for some_variable in range(num_iterations):
statement1
statement2
...
- "for" is a keyword
- "in" is a keyword
- range is a function that we'll use to tell Python how many repetitions we want
- num_iterations is the number of iterations that we want the loop to do
- some_variable is a local variable whose scope is the within the for loop
- some_variable will take on the values from 0 to num_iterations-1 as each iteration of the loop occurs
- for example, in the first iteration, it will be 0, 1 the second time, etc.
- we're computer scientists so we start counting at zero :)
- don't forget the ':' at the end
- Like with defining functions, Python uses indenting to tell which statements belong in the for loop
- Here are a few simple examples. What will each of these do?
# prints out the numbers from 0 to 9
for i in range(10):
print i
# sum the numbers from 0 to n-1
def sum(n):
sum = 0
for val in range(n):
sum = sum + val
return sum
for loops in turtle
- Back to turtle, how can we use a for loop to draw a square?
- look at the iterative_square function in turtle-examples.py
- how could we draw draw a star (i.e. like an asterisk type star?)
- look at asterisk_star functions
- figure out how we have to space the spokes
- do a for loop over the number of spokes
- each iteration in the loop draw a spoke
- need to go backwards into the middle for the next spoke
- rotate right based on the angle we calculated
- what will simple_spiral, spiral and rotating_circles in
turtle-examples.py code
do?
- simple_spiral
- i
- i is just the name of a variable
- for small loops (i.e. just a couple of statements), it's common to just us the variable name i (short for index)
- each time, the length of the edge drawn will be longer by a factor of 5
- 0, 5, 10, 15, 20, ...
- and will be at a 50 degree angle
- if it is < 90 it will spiral out
- > 90, spiral in
- spiral
- similar to simple_spiral, however now we've parameterized the length of the sides and the angle
- rotating_circles
- draws num circles
- each one rotated "angle" degrees from the previous
run walk function from
turtle-examples.py code
- how is this being accomplished?
- turns a random angle between -90 and 90
- steps forward some step size
random module
- there is another python module called "random"
-
http://docs.python.org/library/random.html
- it generates pseudo-random numbers
- what does this mean?
- the numbers are not technically random, they're generated based on an algorithm
- for most purposes this is pretty good
- if you want truly random numbers, check out:
-
http://www.random.org/
- also there are some programs that try and measure things like time between keystrokes, etc. to get some randomness (but these also aren't quite perfect)
- many useful methods inside random
- random -- random number between 0 and 1.0
- uniform(a, b) -- random floats between a and b
- randint(a, b) -- random integers between a and b
- samples from many other distribution
- beta
- exponential
- gamma
- normal
- for now, we're just going to utilize the randint function
- if you only want to import a single function, you can do that like:
from random import randint
- before the '*' indicated all function and variables. Here, we just said the "randint" function
- You can print out a bunch of random numbers if you're curious:
for i in range(100):
print randint(0,10)
look at walk function in
turtle-examples.py code
- went through the loop num_steps times/iterations
- uses the uniform function to get an angle between -90 and 90
what will the pretty_picture function do?
- draws a line
- at an angle between -90 and 90
- of length between 10 and 60
- then draws a star
- of length between 10 and 60
- with int(spokes) spokes
- remember, if we want an integer, for example to be used in range, you need to turn it into an int