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Assignment

Weekend Assignment 1

No new material is introduced this weekend. This assignment combines

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Weekend Assignment 1#

Week 1 Synthesis: Types, Variables, Strings, I/O, and Branching#

No new material is introduced this weekend. This assignment combines everything from Days 1–5 into longer, more realistic programs. Expect this to take 2–4 hours total across Saturday and Sunday.

Create a new file called weekend1_solutions.py and write all of your answers there, clearly labeled by part and exercise number.

Part A: Guided Synthesis (Saturday)#

A1. Receipt Generator (combines: variables, arithmetic, f-strings)#

Write a program that:

  1. Defines three menu items as variables, each with a name and a price:
  • "Burger" — $8.99
  • "Fries" — $3.49
  • "Soda" — $1.99
  1. Computes the subtotal (sum of all three prices)
  2. Computes sales tax at 8.5% of the subtotal
  3. Computes the total (subtotal + tax)
  4. Prints a formatted receipt that looks like this (your prices/formatting should align in columns):
RECEIPT
-------------------------
Burger              $8.99
Fries                $3.49
Soda                 $1.99
-------------------------
Subtotal            $14.47
Tax (8.5%)            $1.23
TOTAL                $15.70

Requirements: Use f-strings with alignment and .2f formatting. Do not hard-code the subtotal, tax, or total — compute them from the item prices using variables.

A2. Temperature Conversion Table (combines: variables, formatting)#

Write a program that converts and prints a small table showing 5 specific Celsius temperatures and their Fahrenheit equivalents: 0, 10, 20, 30, 37 (body temperature), 100.

You do NOT need a loop (we haven't learned them yet) — just write five sets of calculations and five print statements, OR define the five values as separate variables and convert each.

Format the output as an aligned table:

Celsius    Fahrenheit
-------    ----------
   0.0          32.0
  10.0          50.0
  ...

A3. String Analysis Tool (combines: strings, indexing, slicing, branching)#

Write a program that:

  1. Asks the user to enter a word
  2. Prints the word's length
  3. Prints the first half and second half of the word separately (if the length is odd, put the extra character in the second half)
  4. Prints whether the word is a palindrome
  5. Prints whether the word starts and ends with the same letter (even if it's not a full palindrome)

Test your program with: "level", "hello", "noon", "python"

Part B: Independent Application (Saturday or Sunday)#

B1. Movie Ticket Pricing System#

Write a program that determines the price of a movie ticket based on age and whether it's a matinee showing (before 6pm).

Pricing rules:

  • Children (age < 13): $8.00
  • Seniors (age >= 65): $9.00
  • Adults (13-64): $14.00
  • Matinee discount: if it's a matinee, subtract $3.00 from any of the above prices (but the price can never go below $5.00)

Ask the user for their age and whether it's a matinee (yes/no). Print the final ticket price.

Hint: input("Is it a matinee? (yes/no): ") returns a string. Compare it to "yes" (you may want to also handle "Yes", "YES" for robustness — but that's optional for this exercise; we'll learn .lower() properly in Week 3).

B2. Simple Password Strength Checker#

Write a program that asks the user to enter a password (as a string) and checks it against several simple rules using string operations you've learned:

  • Length must be at least 8 characters
  • Must contain at least one digit (Hint: you can check "0" in password or "1" in password or ... — tedious but it works with what we know so far! A cleaner way comes in Week 2 with loops.)
  • Must not be exactly equal to common weak passwords like "password", "12345678", "qwerty123"

Print "Strong password" if all checks pass, otherwise print which checks failed.

Part C: Cumulative Review and Reflection (Sunday)#

C1. Mixed Review Questions#

Answer these without running code first — write your answers, THEN verify in Python.

  1. What is (7 + 3) % 4 * 2? Trace it step by step using PEMDAS.
  2. Given s = "hello world", what is s[6:]? What is s[:5]? What is s[6:].capitalize() if False else s[6]? (trick question — just answer s[6])
  3. What does this print?
   x = 5
   y = "5"
   print(x == y)
   print(str(x) == y)
  1. Why does int(input("Enter a number: ")) sometimes crash if the user types something unexpected? (You don't need to fix this — just explain why, in your own words, in a comment.)
  2. Write the chained comparison version and the and version of: "x is strictly between 10 and 20"

C2. Bug Hunt#

Each snippet below has exactly one bug. Identify it (as a comment) and write the corrected version.

# Snippet 1
x = 5
if x = 10:
    print("ten")
# Snippet 2
name = "Alice"
age = 30
print("Name: " + name + " Age: " + age)
# Snippet 3
score = 72
if score >= 60:
    grade = "Pass"
if score >= 90:
    grade = "Excellent"
print(grade)
# Snippet 4
s = "hello"
print(s[5])

C3. Reflection (write 4-6 sentences)#

In your own words, answer:

  • What concept from this week felt most natural to you?
  • What concept took the longest to click, and what finally helped it make sense?
  • Write one thing you'd explain differently if you were teaching this week's material to a friend.

Write your reflection in 09_PROGRESS_TRACKER/week_01_tracker.md under the Reflection section.

Self-Check Before Moving to Week 2#

  • [ ] All 5 daily quizzes attempted and reviewed
  • [ ] Part A (A1, A2, A3) completed and runs without errors
  • [ ] Part B (B1, B2) completed and runs without errors
  • [ ] Part C (C1, C2, C3) completed
  • [ ] Progress tracker filled in
  • [ ] You can explain, without notes, the difference between / and //
  • [ ] You can explain, without notes, why int(input(...)) is needed instead of just input(...) when working with numbers
  • [ ] You can write a 3-branch if/elif/else from scratch without looking at examples

If you checked all the boxes, you're ready for Week 2: Iteration and Loops.