Topic #5b – Putting Things Together

What have we seen so far?

• Values

• Types

• Variables

• Print

• Input

• Functions

• Booleans

• Logic

• If/Else

A car rental place needs our help. They want a simple program to calculate how much a customer is to be charged based on their rental agreement, age, how far they drove, and how long they had the car.

Rules:

• We will get the customer’s:

  • Age

  • Rental agreement classification code (B or D)

  • Number of days rented

  • Starting odometer reading

  • Ending odometer reading

• If the classification code is B

  • Base charge of $20.00/day

  • Plus $0.30 for every km driven

• If the classification is D

  • Base charge of $50.00/day

  • Plus $0.30 for every km driven above the 100km/day average allowance

• All renters under the age of 25 are charged an additional $10.00/day

• Print out the final total cost

Step 1

• Freak out

Step 2

• Let’s take a deep breath and break this problem down

• Half of the description is IO

  • Let’s save this for last because it’s super easy

• The only beefy part of this is the calculation

  • Freak out again

  • Then realize we can break it down into bits and pieces that we can solve

Let’s look at the requirements:

• If the classification code is B

  • Base charge of $20.00/days

  • Plus $0.30 for every km driven

• If the classification is D

  • Base charge of $50.00/days

  • Plus $0.30 for every km driven above the 100km/day average allowance.

What do I see?

• I see if statements there

  • Well I know how to do that

• I see that there is some math, which isn’t too bad

  • I can do simple math

• Looks like we need to know the total kms

  • I can do that

• Need to know the average number of kms driven

  • Easy stuff

• Need to know how many kms above 100 we are

  • So just figure out if a number is greater than 100?

Step 3:

Based on this, I will write:

• Function to calculate the kms

• Function to calculate average kms

• Function to calculate the number of kms above the 100 allowance

• Function to calculate the total charge

Warning

THERE ARE LITERALLY INFINITE WAYS YOU COULD DO THIS. THIS IS JUST ONE!

Function to calculate the total number of kms. What do we know?

• Odometer readings!

def total_kms(odometer_start, odometer_finish):
    '''
    This function calculates the total number of kilometers driven based
    on starting and ending odometer readings.

    :param odometer_start: The number of kms the car had before renting
    :param odometer_finish: The number of kms the car had after rending
    :return: The total kms driven during the rental period
    '''

    return odometer_finish - odometer_start

Who thought that was too easy?

Function to calculate the daily average number of kms. What do we know?

• We have a function to calculate the total kms

• We also know the number of days the car was rented.

def average_kms_per_day(num_days, num_kms):
    '''
    Calculate the average number of kilometers driven per day
    over the rental period

    :param num_days: The total number of days the car was rented
    :param num_kms: The total number of kilometers driven during the rental period
    :return: The average number of kilometers driven per day
    '''

    return num_kms/num_days

Who thought that was also too easy?

Ok. Now for something harder… Number of kms over the daily average allowance. What do we know?

• Function to calculate the daily average

def num_kms_above_average(num_days, num_kms):
    '''
    Calculates the number of kms the renter went over of their daily allowance.
    We will use the customer's average daily kms.

    :param num_days: Number of days the renter had the car
    :param num_kms: Number of kms the renter drove in total
    :return: The number of kms over 100 they went (return 0 if it's less than 100)
    '''

    # Calculate the number of kms traveled per day.
    kms_per_day = average_kms_per_day(num_days, num_kms)

    # If the average kms traveled is above 100,
    # return how much above
    if kms_per_day  > 100:
        return kms_per_day - 100
    else:
        return 0

Who thought that wasn’t too bad?

Now for the tough one… calculate the total cost. What do we know?

• age

• class

• odometer readings

• number of days

• the above functions

def calculate_total_charge(num_days, age, code, odometer_start, odometer_finish):
    '''
    Calculate how much the renter needs to be charged based on the classification,
    the number of kms travelled and the age of the driver.

    :param num_days: Number of days the car was rented.
    :param age: Age of the driver.
    :param code: The classification code (B ord D).
    :param odometer_start: Odometer when the renter took the car.
    :param odometer_finish: Odomoter when the renter returned the car.
    :return: The amount to charge the renter.
    '''

    # Setup a variable for our total charge
    total_charge = 0

    # Calculate the number of kilometres traveled.
    total_kms_traveled = total_kms(odometer_start, odometer_finish)

    # If B, $20/day + km charge of 0.30/km
    if code == 'B':
        total_charge = 20.00 * num_days + 0.30 * total_kms_traveled
    # If D, $50 base charge, + 0.30/km OVER 100km
    else:
        total_charge = 50.00 * num_days + 0.30 * num_kms_above_average(num_days, total_kms_traveled)

    # if they're young, add an additional $10/day charge.
    if age < 25:
        total_charge += (10 * num_days)

    # return the result
    return total_charge

Hmm, defo was tricker, but still not too bad at all!

Now just do the IO part, which we have done a bunch of times before

age = int(input('Age: '))
classification = input('Classification Code: ')
number_of_days = int(input('Number of Days Rented: '))
starting_kms = float(input('Odometer reading at start: '))
ending_kms = float(input('Odometer reading at end: '))

total_charge = calculate_total_charge(number_of_days, age, classification, starting_kms, ending_kms)

print('The total charge is: ' + str(total_charge))

Let’s try: Google colab.

Activity

Think about how you would write this differently

• Would you use all the same functions?

• Would you change how the functions worked?

• Would you move where you called the functions?

• Would you add additional functions?

• Would you use constants? (say yes)

• So, why did I write it the way I did?

• Honestly, just because

• No other reason other than it was the way I wrote it

• What matters here is that it worked

• But I could write this so so so many other ways and still have it work

• This is NORMAL

For next class

• Read chapter 7 of the text