Solving problems to reinforce understanding

Are you ready to level up your Python skills? Dive into the world of dictionaries, one of Python’s most powerful data structures! In this course, we’ll explore how to manipulate dictionaries to solve various problems. Don’t worry if you’re new to programming or Python – we’ll explain everything in a way that’s easy to understand, even for a 10-year-old!

1. Introduction to Dictionaries:

• What are dictionaries?
  • Imagine you have a magic bookshelf where each book has its own label. Dictionaries in Python work like this magical bookshelf. Instead of organizing books, we organize data with labels.

• Creating Dictionaries:

# Creating a dictionary
my_dict = {"apple": 3, "banana": 6, "orange": 4}

• Accessing Elements:

# Accessing elements
print(my_dict["apple"])  # Output: 3

2. Dictionary Manipulation Techniques:

• Adding and Updating Entries:

# Adding and updating entries
my_dict["grapes"] = 5  # Add a new entry
my_dict["banana"] = 8  # Update an existing entry

• Deleting Entries:

# Deleting entries
del my_dict["orange"]  # Delete a specific entry
my_dict.pop("apple")  # Remove and return value for the given key

• Iterating Through Dictionaries:

# Iterating through dictionaries
for fruit, quantity in my_dict.items():
    print(f"There are {quantity} {fruit}s")

3. Problem Solving with Dictionaries:

Now, let’s put our dictionary skills to the test with some fun problems!

Problem 1: Counting Fruits

• Given a list of fruits, count how many times each fruit appears.

fruits = ["apple", "banana", "apple", "orange", "banana", "apple"]
fruit_count = {}

for fruit in fruits:
    if fruit in fruit_count:
        fruit_count[fruit] += 1
    else:
        fruit_count[fruit] = 1

print(fruit_count)

Problem 2: Student Grades

• Given a dictionary of students and their grades, find the student with the highest grade.

grades = {"Alice": 85, "Bob": 91, "Charlie": 78, "Diana": 95}
highest_grade = max(grades.values())
top_students = [student for student, grade in grades.items() if grade == highest_grade]

print(f"The highest grade is {highest_grade} achieved by: {', '.join(top_students)}")

Congratulations! You’ve completed the Python Dictionary Manipulation Techniques course. You now have a solid understanding of how to work with dictionaries in Python, from basic operations to solving real-world problems. Keep practicing and exploring, and soon you’ll be a Python pro!

Now, try these practice questions to reinforce your learning:

1. Create a dictionary representing a shopping list with items and their prices. Add a new item to the list.
2. Given a dictionary of words and their frequencies, find the word with the highest frequency.
3. Write a program to merge two dictionaries.
4. Given a list of dictionaries, each containing a person’s name and age, find the oldest person.

Happy coding!