How to output highest number out of 3 numbers?

Question

Sorry if this seems like a stupid question, I'm rather new to Python. I need to create a program for a school project. The project outline says this: Students can earn their final mark in a course in two ways. First the course work can be worth 60%, the final project worth 20% and the final exam worth 20%. Alternately, the course work can be worth 70%, the final project worth 10% and the final exam worth 20%. Use the following code as a start and create a program that outputs the highest grade the student could achieve.

course = 87
finalProject = 75
exam = 82

Once again, I apologize if this seems like a stupid question, I'm quite new to Python. I just need to know the best way of going about doing this.

Answer 1

It's nothing but maths. Really...

# Your starting point
course = 87
finalProject = 75
exam = 82

# What I would "crunch" into a calculator besides the variables
total1 = (course * 0.6) + (finalProject * 0.2) + (exam * 0.2)
total2 = (course * 0.7) + (finalProject * 0.1) + (exam * 0.2)

# Printing my computed answers just to make sure I can tell if it gives the right output
print "Total1: %s\tTotal2: %s" % (total1, total2)

# Printing the highest one. 
print "\nYour mark is: %s" % max(total1, total2)

See it in action: http://codepad.org/UsfAVC30

You might find this interesting: Interesting article from meta.programmers.stackexchange.com

Answer 2

The built-in max(...) function just returns the greatest argument passed to it; it's also usable with lists: max([1, 2, 3]) => 3.

In your case:

highest = max(
    course * 0.6 + finalProject * 0.2 + exam * 0.2,
    course * 0.7 + finalProject * 0.1 + exam * 0.2
)

Answer 3

It's a simple math problem, being new to Python is irrelevant. Calculate the final mark using both equations, then check which one is larger. Output the value of the largest one.

Answer 4

You are comparing the first and the second grading system right? Shouldn't it be just two variables? You can use max() to compare to numbers: max(a, b) returns the higher between two numbers. The rest you can solve yourself.