Introduction to computer programming (Python)

Python is one of the most popular programming languages and it is a #1 language for data analysis, which could be a part of MIS or a task by itself.

Traditionally programming is divided into core functions (or computing) and interfaces.

A core functions can be seen as a box (programming module) that accepts certain input, compute something, and provide the output. The interface modules would be responsible for collecting input and presenting the output.

As we learned, data can be stored in variables, or collections like lists (or arrays). The idea behind the list is that a single name will be used along with the index to store multiple values.

Let a be a Python list, then we can declare a list with values as:

a = [2, 4, 3, 10, 33]

Standard functions can be used to calculate the sum or the length (number of elements) of a list:

sum(a) len(a)

One of the most common operations with lists is iteration. Then a code can be repeatedly applied to each element of the list.

For example, the code bellow will iterate through the list and print each element of the list

for element in a:

print (element)

As you can see print() will output the values of .

Also note that Python uses tabulation (indentation) to define the blocks of the code. Code in the same block will have the same indentation. For example, if you use single tabulation for print (element) and print (, ) line the program will know that those lines together represents the code that should be called multiple times for each element. While print (The end) will be called once because it does not have indentation to be a part of the loop.

for element in a:

print (element)

print (, )

print (The end)

A part of the code can be written to be executed under certain condition. Then an if statement should be used.

For example, the code below calculates an absolute value of a variable:

if x < 0:

x = -x

(If x is less than zero assign x to x (or invert xs sign).

Directions

Using the core concepts of Python language, and the hints given above, create a Python program to calculate an average of a given array of number and output all numbers that are higher than the average by more than 20%.

Use Python comments (# at the beginning of a line) to explain the purpose of each part of the code.