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DICTIONARIES & THE FUNDAMENTAL THEOREM OF CALCULUS

On using dictionaries in Python and learning The Fundamental Theorem of Calculus.

DICTIONARIES & THE FUNDAMENTAL THEOREM OF CALCULUS

NOVEMBER 30, 2016/BARRY COLONNA

So I had an unproductive week, how about you? I didn’t expect to get too much done around Thanksgiving, but I was also gone all day for three days straight, so that pretty much accounted for the rest of my week. As such, I only completed one lesson of calculus and one in programming, which is rather unfortunate.

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In integral calculus on Khan Academy, we studied the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus.

It sounds important, and it is important. It basically explains how differential and integral calculus are related. Hearing the name, I wondered why it wasn’t the first thing we learned in calculus, but it makes sense to learn differentials and integrals first. It’s also a much simpler concept than you’d imagine.

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I still haven’t learned how to calculate integrals, but I have learned most of the properties necessary to calculate them.

The Fundamental Theorem of Calculus teaches you how to calculate the derivative of indefinite integrals. Since the point of this journal isn’t to teach you the concepts as much as it is to tell you what I have learned, I’m not going to attempt to explain it in detail. I do still recommend Khan if you’re interested in learning math, however.

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In Python Data Structures from the University of Michigan on Coursera, we learned about dictionaries. That’s what they’re known as in Python, anyhow. They go by different names depending on the programming language, such as associative arrays, maps, hash tables, or symbol tables.

Dictionaries are empty sets that variables and values can be added to. For the purposes of our weekly assignment, we used the dictionary to add and count the number of times words were used in a text document. We then returned the most common word/string and how many times it was used.

As always, this sounds so incredibly simple, but I feel that I’ve come a long way in a short time. When I first started programming, I would have looked at this code and considered it a foreign language. Now I’m able to write the program (with the help of my notes, at times) with relative ease.

That’s about all the news I have this week. I’m sorry it’s not more, but hopefully I’ll be able to pick up the pace next week.

Thank you for stopping by. Keep reaching for your dreams!





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This journal will be about my journey to become a data scientist and better myself through education and fitness.

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