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College Board Big Idea 1

Identifying and Correcting Errors (Unit 1.4)

Become familiar with types of errors and strategies for fixing them

  • Review CollegeBoard videos and take notes on blog
  • Complete assigned MCQ questions if applicable

Code Segments

Practice fixing the following code segments!

Segment 1: Alphabet List

Intended behavior: create a list of characters from the string contained in the variable alphabet

Code:

%%js

var alphabet = "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz";
var alphabetList = [];

for (var i = 0; i < 26; i++) {
    alphabetList.push(alphabet[i]);
}

console.log(alphabetList);

<IPython.core.display.Javascript object>

What I Changed

I changed line 7 code originally from alphabetList.push(i) to alphabetList.push(alphabet[i]). The original code pushed the value of variable i into the alphabetList array, which resulted in an array of numbers from 0 to 9. In the modified code, I changed it to alphabet[i] to push the characters from the alphabet string at the corresponding index i into the alphabetList array.

Segment 2: Numbered Alphabet

Intended behavior: print the number of a given alphabet letter within the alphabet. For example:

"_" is letter number _ in the alphabet

Where the underscores (_) are replaced with the letter and the position of that letter within the alphabet (e.g. a=1, b=2, etc.)

Code:

%%js 

var letterNumber = 5;
var alphabet = "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz";

if (letterNumber >= 1 && letterNumber <= alphabet.length) {
    let letter = alphabet[letterNumber - 1];
    console.log(letter + " is letter number " + letterNumber + " in the alphabet");
} else {
    console.log("Invalid letter number. It should be between 1 and 26.");
}


<IPython.core.display.Javascript object>

What I Changed

I added the alphabet variable to store the alphabet string. I also added a condition to check if letterNumber is within the valid range (1 through 26). The code calculates the letter by accessing the corresponding character in the alphabet string using letterNumber - 1. The -1 is important because of JavaScript’s 0-based indexing.

Segment 3: Odd Numbers

Intended behavior: print a list of all the odd numbers below 10

Code:

%%js

let odds = [];
let i = 1; // Start with the first odd number

while (i < 10) { // Check if the number is less than 10
  odds.push(i);
  i += 2; // Increment by 2 to get the next odd number
}

console.log(odds);

<IPython.core.display.Javascript object>

What I Changed

I changed the variable name from evens to odds as the new code finds the odd numbers under 10 instead of the even numbers. I initialized i with 1 to start with the first odd number under 10, which is 1.

BELOW NOT EDITED

The intended outcome is printing a number between 1 and 100 once, if it is a multiple of 2 or 5

  • What values are outputted incorrectly. Why?
  • Make changes to get the intended outcome.
%%js

var numbers = []
var newNumbers = []
var i = 0

while (i < 100) {
    numbers.push(i)
    i += 1
}
for (var i of numbers) {
    if (numbers[i] % 5 === 0 || numbers[i] % 2 === 0)
        newNumbers.push(numbers[i])
}
console.log(newNumbers) 



<IPython.core.display.Javascript object>

Challenge

This code segment is at a very early stage of implementation.

  • What are some ways to (user) error proof this code?
  • The code should be able to calculate the cost of the meal of the user

Hint:

  • write a “single” test describing an expectation of the program of the program
  • test - input burger, expect output of burger price
  • run the test, which should fail because the program lacks that feature
  • write “just enough” code, the simplest possible, to make the test pass

Then repeat this process until you get program working like you want it to work.

%%js

var menu =  {"burger": 3.99,
         "fries": 1.99,
         "drink": 0.99}
var total = 0

//shows the user the menu and prompts them to select an item
console.log("Menu")
for (var item in menu) {
    console.log(item + "  $" + menu[item].toFixed(2)) //why is toFixed used?
}
//ideally the code should support mutliple items
var item = "burger"

//code should add the price of the menu items selected by the user 
console.log(total)

Hacks

  • Fix the errors in the first three segments in this notebook and say what you changed in the code cell under “What I Changed” (Challenge is optional)