Trouble multiplying and dividing in Python

Question

So I'm writing a game for a competition.

Up until this point, the user has entered a number.

if user % 2 == 0 : 

    print("What you entered is an even number.")
    print("")

    print("So, according to RULE 1, we must now divide it by 2.")

    int(user)/ 2
    thing2 = "So, now we're left with " + str(user) + "."

    print (thing2)
else : 

    print("What you entered is an odd number.")
    print("")

    print("So, according to RULE 1, we must now multiply it by 3, and add 1.")

    int(user) * 3
    user += 1

    thing2 = "So, now we're left with " + str(user) + "."
    print (thing2)

.... But the int(user) * 3 part doesn't actually multiply the number by 3, but it does add one.

For the record, I've tried loads of possibilities like just having user * 3 (without the int() thing there) and I'm a beginner at Python.

Answer 1

You need to say:

user = int(user)*3

This makes the value of user the original times by 3. Before, you didn't do anything to the value of the multiplication. You need to save the value in a variable

Answer 2

You need to save the output of that statement:

user = int(user) * 3

You may want to change user to an integer in the beginning so you don't need to keep doing it, something like:

user = int(user)

Answer 3

int(user) * 3 and int(user)/2 return a value, but this value is not assigned. So you have to do

user = user * 3

and

user = user / 2

As pointed out by jonrsharpe in the comments, the int() appearing in your code is something more complicated than I'd thought. Since during the equality check user is already a number, you're either simply doing something unnecessary out of confusion or trying to convert floating point to integer (if I recall correctly, in python 3.x division converts integers to floats by default). If it's the latter, you should do user = int(user / 2) or better yet, user = user // 2 (again thanks to jonrsharpe).