FAQ: Recursion vs. Iteration - Coding Throwdown - Rules of the Throwdown

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This community-built FAQ covers the “Rules of the Throwdown” exercise from the lesson “Recursion vs. Iteration - Coding Throwdown”.

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This exercise can be found in the following Codecademy content:

Learn Recursion: Python

FAQs on the exercise Rules of the Throwdown

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2

Hello, I have a question on this exercise. My solution was accepted, but I didn’t do what the hint describes (which I checked afterwards to compare notes).
The objective is to write a factorial function that does not use recursion. Hint says:

# initialize a result variable set to 1
# loop while the input does not equal 0
  # reassign result to be result * input
  # decrement input by 1
# return result

What I did instead:

product = n
  for number in range(1, n):
    product = product * number
  return product

Any reason not to do it like this, or is this not what was meant by iteration?

3

Your solution is good.
Thye just suggest using while instead of for.
The result is the same.

I did:

def factorial(n):
  product = 1
  for number in range(n, 1, -1):
    product *= number
  return product

It can be done like that:

def factorial(n):
  product = 1
  while n: #n is False when equals to 0.
    product *= n
    n -= 1
  return product
1 Like
4

This solution will not account for factorial(0)

5 
def factorial(n):
    product = 1
    for number in range(1, n+1):
        product = product * number
    return product

now it works =)

6

This is my solution:

def factorial(n):
  if n < 0:
    ValueError("Inputs 0 or greater only")

  total = 1

  for num in range(1, n + 1):
    total *= num

  return total

# test cases
print(factorial(3) == 6)
print(factorial(0) == 1)
print(factorial(5) == 120)