How am I supposed to define 'n' in this scenario for

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#1

How am I supposed to define ‘n’ in the below scenario? What is ‘n’? Is it the number of items in the list or is it a specific number?

Create a function named more_than_n that has three parameters named lst , item , and n .The function should return True if item appears in the list more than n times. The function should return False otherwise.

Here is what I have so far:

#Write your function here

def more_than_n(lst, item, n):
  length_list = len(lst)
  if item > length_list:
    return True
  else:
    False


#Uncomment the line below when your function is done
print(more_than_n([2, 4, 6, 2, 3, 2, 1, 2], 2, 3))
#2

n is reffering to the number of times you are seeing if an item shows up in lst. In this case your print() test has n equal to 3:

print(more_than_n([2, 4, 6, 2, 3, 2, 1, 2], 2, 3))
                                               ^

Since you are wanting to see if item shows up more than n times, can you think of a way to check how many of item are in lst?

Hint 
lst = [1, 1, 1, 2, 3, 3, 1, 3]
print(lst.count(1)) #prints 4
#3

In this case we’d assume n is a stand-in for any positive integer which is used to test how many times item can appear in a list. For a brief description of what’s expected see below-

Lets define a quick list sequence-
lst = ['a', 'b', 'b', 'b', 'c']

Your function should test if item appears more than n times…
So; if item = 'a' and n = 2 it should return False.
# 'a' does not appear more than twice.

If item = b and n = 2 it should return True.
# 'b' appears more than twice.

If item = 'b' and n = 3 it should return False.
# ‘b’ does not appear more than three times.

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#4

@8-bit-gaming @tgrtim

Thank you for the explanation and I completely forgot about the count function.

I’ve added the following:

#Write your function here

def more_than_n(lst, item, n):
  length_list = lst.count(n)
  if item > length_list:
    return True
  else:
    False


#Uncomment the line below when your function is done
print(more_than_n([2, 4, 6, 2, 3, 2, 1, 2], 2, 3))

I feel like this is close but it’s saying that it is wrong for a specific result:

more_than_n([2, 3, 4], 2, 1) should have returned False , and it returned True

I guess because 2 appears twice in the above scenario. However I’m not sure where I went wrong in my code.

#5

Well one of the best ways to debug your code is to try using print() inside your function.

Try printing out different variables like item and length_list to see what those are currently equal to.

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#6

@8-bit-gaming

It’s outputting

2 1
None

#Write your function here

def more_than_n(lst, item, n):
  length_list = lst.count(n)
  if item > length_list:
    return print(item, length_list)
  else:
    False


#Uncomment the line below when your function is done
print(more_than_n([2, 4, 6, 2, 3, 2, 1, 2], 2, 3))

It’s also saying that it should return false for the following result set:

more_than_n([2, 3, 4], 2, 1) should have returned False, and it returned True

It’s really not clear what values are being plugged into n or item or length_list at all.

I can’t decipher how/why the result is wrong. It looks right, 2 is greater than 1 so it returned True.

#7

Perhaps I should have been clearer earlier. Currently lst is the list being fed into the function, item is what you are checking for, and n is the number of times you are checking to see if item shows up.

So if item is what you are looking for, and n is the number of times it should show up, than lst.count(n) is going to be how many times 3 is in the list.

Here is a pseudo code anology.

Currently you are checking:
if item is more than the amount of times n is in lst.

Were as you are supposed to check:
if the amount of times item is in lst is more than n.

#8

@8-bit-gaming

Okay I had a bit of a breakthrough there, thank you for the explanation. The print function that it is running is making a lot more sense.

I feel as if I’m so close now. It still is returning None. I would expect to at least return False.

#Write your function here

def more_than_n(lst, item, n):
  n = lst.count(item)
  if item > n:
    return True
  else:
    False

#Uncomment the line below when your function is done
print(more_than_n([2, 4, 6, 2, 3, 2, 1, 2], 2, 3))
#9

It is because since the if gate evaluates to False, and you don’t have anything returned from there.

If you don’t know you, can use multiple return statements in a function:

def boolean_binary(boolean): 
  if boolean >= 1:
    return True
  else: 
    return False

print(boolean_binary(1)) #prints True
#10

Holy smokes I think I got it:

#Write your function here

def more_than_n(lst, item, n):
  test = lst.count(item)
  if test > n:
    return True
  else:
    return False

#Uncomment the line below when your function is done
print(more_than_n([2, 4, 6, 2, 3, 2, 1, 2], 2, 3))

Thanks for your help! @8-bit-gaming. That felt good to finally figure out. I think I learned a lot on this one. Again thank you so much.

1 Like