Community Data Science Course (Spring 2023)/Week 1 coding challenges

As you write these, build a Jupyter notebook that is documented so that it's clear which code and cells are answering each question.

Some of these questions build on each other and that will likely mean that there's some duplicate. You don't have copy and paste the same variables over and over but it's OK if you duplicate your code.

#1 Shortbread


I found this simple nice shortbread recipe but I want to scale it up. Let's do it Python!

#1.1 Compute the total volume
Write some Python code to include the basic proportions in three variables  (set to 2¼),   (set to ½) and   (set to 1).

Now have your program print the total volume of shortbread dough with line that says something like.

#1.2 Scale it up!
Now lets change the program so that it a new variable called. Lets set this equal to 1 by default. Now lets make it so that if you increase the number of batches, it will print the new total volume.

What is the total volume of 1/2 batch? How about 3 batches? How about 5?

#1.3 Will it fit in my pans?
I personally tend to bake shortbread in big sheets in deep baking pans. Lets say my baking pan can only hold 5 cups of dough. But I have three such baking pans!

Write some Python that prints out a message to tell me if the three total amounts above (half, 3, and 5 batches) will fit in 1 pans, 2 pans, 3 pans, of it it will be too much to fit in any of my pans!

#2.1 Just the length
Write some python code where there's a variable that contains the course catalog description (available at the top of the syllabus) and tells me how many characters there are in the course description.

#2.2 Looking inside the text

 * 1) Write some code that tells us if that course description variable we made contains the word "python"? Have it print out helpful answers regardless of what it finds.
 * 2) Be ready to talk about and explain your answer!
 * 3) Now add some code that tells us if it contains the word "python" or "statistics".
 * 4) Now add some more code to tell if it contains "python" or "statistics" or "visualization"

#3 A program that knows its limits
Write code that has a variable called  and that multiples the number times 3 and prints out the answer—but that checks to see if it's a number first but prints out a message saying that it can't do this if it's not a number.