Homework Assignment

Your homework assignment this week is to write a function called 'average'. it takes a list as input and returns the arithmetic average. You should assume the list only contains numbers.

It should have a docstring explaining what it does (hint: """text""").

Hints:

len(input) will give you the length of the list.
sum(input) will add everything up.
If the list is empty, return the string "EMPTY LIST"

FOR BONUS POINTS

You are ONLY allowed to use addition and for-loops (The use of LEN and SUM is not allowed!).

The bonus problem is a bit tricky but I believe in you guys. Good luck!

Possible Solution (easy)



In [11]:

    
def average(L):
    """L is a list, we return the average of L (a float)"""
    if not L:
        return "EMPTY LIST"
    return sum(L)/len(L)

Possible Solution (hard)



In [10]:

    
def average2(L):
    """L is a list, we return the average of L (a float)"""
    if not L:
        return "EMPTY LIST"
    
    total = 0  
    length = 0
    for num in L:
        total += num
        length +=1
    
    return total / length