Sets and the deepcopy module

Python
1

hello everyone, I am almost finished with the probability calculator, and am a bit lost on the deepcopy method in the copy module. Here is my problem: this is the code for my experiment function:

def experiment(hat, expected_balls, num_balls_drawn, num_experiments):

    """ a function that returns the probability of drawing certain colours of balls out of
    the hat over n experiments"""

    match = 0
    expected_balls_set = set(expected_balls.keys())

    for i in range(num_experiments):
        copied_hat = copy.deepcopy(hat)
        balls_drawn_in_experiment = copied_hat.draw(num_balls_drawn)
        balls_drawn_in_experiment_set = set(balls_drawn_in_experiment)
        for i in range(num_experiments):
            if set(balls_drawn_in_experiment_set).intersection(set(expected_balls_set)) != 0:
                match = + 1
    probability = match / num_experiments

    return probability

Which creates a copy of the hat, and then creates a set of the copied hat, with which the intersection method is used to see if the expected balls match the balls that were drawn. I have checked various forums and the python copy module documentation and all sources seem to point to the idea that sets can be copied and deepcopied. But when I try this code out, I fail the third test, as it says that the probability I gave was incorrect *( 00.1 != 0.272)

I have found a snippet of code written by another user for the probability experiment that in both structure and syntax is very similar to mine, except it does not use sets, and when I tried and substitute that piece of code in my program the calculator passed all tests

Here is the user’s code:

def experiment(hat, expected_balls, num_balls_drawn, num_experiments):
favourable_outcomes = 0

for _ in range(num_experiments):
	isFavourable = True
	experiment_hat = copy.deepcopy(hat)
	balls_drawn = experiment_hat.draw(num_balls_drawn)
	# count the number of balls from balls_drawn with the expected_balls; If they are equal to the expected balls, increment
	# favourable outcomes.
	for ball_color,count in expected_balls.items():
		if isFavourable:
			if balls_drawn.count(ball_color) >= count:
				isFavourable = True
			else:
				isFavourable = False
	if isFavourable:
		favourable_outcomes += 1

return favourable_outcomes/num_experiments

Any ideas of why their code which doesn’t use sets work? I know I can come up with a similar function that also doesn’t use sets that will be able to pass the tests, but at this point more than having a hint towards a solution I am just curious about the reason why sets don’t seem to work as a solution to the problem.
Many thanks to you all!

2

Why are you double looping over the range of experiments?

3

I’d be more surprised if a set would work.
A set is a data-structure saving UNIQUE-data based on a generated hash-value.
However we don’t draw “unique” balls in the experiment. We draw balls with a color that can be double and more.

If you turn a iterable object (like a list) into a set, you do this to GET RID OF DOUBLE VALUES :wink:
Now if I draw [“blue”, “blue”, “green”, “green”] the resulting set is {“blue”, “green”} → this will just be garbage because the expected balls are two blue and one green (or so), so you need to keep track of their number of occurence which sets don’t.

The next thing is…

A set is a data-structure, 0 is an integer. How could they be equal in the first place?
And how would the intersection help you determine a positive outcome? It would make sense if the intersection is supposed to be equal to the expected_balls – but even then I don’t know HOW Python compares sets. Does it go by content? Or does it check if the object on the left is THE SAME as on the right (going by memory-adress)?

That message is impossible ^^°
Floats have no leading zeroes, so there can’t be two zeroes before the period…

Soooo tl;dr:
Please inform yourself how sets in Python work ^^°

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