On Oct 21, 10:18 pm, Terry Reedy <tjre...@udel.edu> wrote: > On 10/21/2010 6:55 AM, Baba wrote: > > > Hi everyone > > > i need a hint regarding the following exercise question: > > > "Write a program that generates all Pythagorean triples whose small > > sides are no larger than n. > > This is not well worded. I take 'small sides' (plural) to mean the two > smaller, non-hypotenuse sides (which are necessarily shorter than the > hypotenuse). So the possible pairs of values i,j, where i is the shorter > of the two, have > > > Try it with n<= 200." > > Again, not well worded; I believe this is meant to be n==200, except > that the program should take n as a parameter and then give it value > 200, so that the could work if n were given some other value. > > So the possible pairs of values i,j, where i is the shorter of the two, > have j <= n (==200) and i <= j. > > -- > Terry Jan Reedy
Hi Terry, the full exercise reads as follows: Write a program that generates all Pythagorean triples whose small sides are no larger than n. Try it with n <= 200. (Hint: Use two for loops to enumerate possible values for the small sides and then test to determine whether the result is an integral square. source: http://users.soe.ucsc.edu/~pohl/12A/ch03-state.pdf (exercise 11, it's a Java book but i like to use Python for solving such basic exercises as it is a much less cumbersome language) i agree that possibly the wording makes this more difficult than it is. Anyway, i'm a beginner so my problem solving techniques are still quite shaky. the bit i'm having difficulties with in constructing my loops is: "whose small sides are no larger than n" i don't know what to do with that :( Baba -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
