Making Choices

Learning Objectives

• Explain the similarities and differences between tuples and lists.
• Write conditional statements including if, elif, and else branches.
• Correctly evaluate expressions containing and and or.

In our last lesson, we discovered something suspicious was going on in our inflammation data by drawing some plots. How can we use Python to automatically recognize the different features we saw, and take a different action for each? In this lesson, we'll learn how to write code that runs only when certain conditions are true.

Conditionals

We can ask Python to take different actions, depending on a condition, with an if statement:

num = 37
if num > 100:
    print('greater')
else:
    print('not greater')
print('done')

The second line of this code uses the keyword if to tell Python that we want to make a choice. If the test that follows the if statement is true, the body of the if (i.e., the lines indented underneath it) are executed. If the test is false, the body of the else is executed instead. Only one or the other is ever executed:

Conditional statements don't have to include an else. If there isn't one, Python simply does nothing if the test is false:

num = 53
print('before conditional...')
if num > 100:
    print('53 is greater than 100')
print('...after conditional')

We can also chain several tests together using elif, which is short for "else if". The following Python code uses elif to print the sign of a number.

num = -3

if num > 0:
    print(num, "is positive")
elif num == 0:
    print(num, "is zero")
else:
    print(num, "is negative")

One important thing to notice in the code above is that we use a double equals sign == to test for equality rather than a single equals sign because the latter is used to mean assignment.

We can also combine tests using and and or. and is only true if both parts are true:

if (1 > 0) and (-1 > 0):
    print('both parts are true')
else:
    print('one part is not true')

while or is true if at least one part is true:

if (1 < 0) or (-1 < 0):
    print('at least one test is true')

Checking our Data

Now that we've seen how conditionals work, we can use them to check for the suspicious features we saw in our inflammation data. In the first couple of plots, the maximum inflammation per day seemed to rise like a straight line, one unit per day. We can check for this inside the for loop we wrote with the following conditional:

if data.min(axis=0)[0] == 0 and data.max(axis=0)[20] == 20:
    print('Suspicious looking maxima!')

We also saw a different problem in the third dataset; the minima per day were all zero (looks like a healthy person snuck into our study). We can also check for this with an elif condition:

elif data.min(axis=0).sum() == 0:
    print 'Minima add up to zero!'

And if neither of these conditions are true, we can use else to give the all-clear:

else:
    print 'Seems OK!'

Let's test that out:

import numpy
data = numpy.loadtxt(fname='data/inflammation-01.csv', delimiter=',')
if data.max(axis=0)[0] == 0 and data.max(axis=0)[20] == 20:
    print('Suspicious looking maxima!')
elif data.min(axis=0).sum() == 0:
    print('Minima add up to zero!')
else:
    print('Seems OK!')

data = numpy.loadtxt(fname='data/inflammation-03.csv', delimiter=',')
if data.max(axis=0)[0] == 0 and data.max(axis=0)[20] == 20:
    print('Suspicious looking maxima!')
elif data.min(axis=0).sum() == 0:
    print('Minima add up to zero!')
else:
    print('Seems OK!')

In this way, we have asked Python to do something different depending on the condition of our data. Here we printed messages in all cases, but we could also imagine not using the else catch-all so that messages are only printed when something is wrong, freeing us from having to manually examine every plot for features we've seen before.

Challenges

How many paths?

Which of the following would be printed if you were to run this code? Why did you pick this answer?

1. A
2. B
3. C
4. B and C

{.python}
if 4 > 5:
    print 'A'
elif 4 == 5:
    print 'B'
elif 4 < 5:
    print 'C'

What is truth?

True and False are special words in Python called booleans which represent true and false statements. However, they aren't the only values in Python that are true and false. In fact, any value can be used in an if or elif. After reading and running the code below, explain what the rule is for which values are considered true and which are considered false. (Note that if the body of a conditional is a single statement, we can write it on the same line as the if.)

if '': print('empty string is true')
if 'word': print('word is true')
if []: print('empty list is true')
if [1, 2, 3]: print('non-empty list is true')
if 0: print('zero is true')
if 1: print('one is true')

Close enough

Write some conditions that print True if the variable a is within 10% of the variable b and False otherwise. Compare your implementation with your partner's: do you get the same answer for all possible pairs of numbers?

In-place operators

Python (and most other languages in the C family) provides in-place operators that work like this:

x = 1  # original value
x += 1 # add one to x, assigning result back to x
x *= 3 # multiply x by 3
print(x)

Write some code that sums the positive and negative numbers in a list separately, using in-place operators. Do you think the result is more or less readable than writing the same without in-place operators?

Tuples and exchanges

Explain what the overall effect of this code is:

left = 'L'
right = 'R'

temp = left
left = right
right = temp

Compare it to:

left, right = right, left

Do they always do the same thing? Which do you find easier to read?