Writing a Simple Factorial Program. (Python 2)

Writing a simple factorial program with a "for" loop

What I want to do in this video is

introduce you to a “for" loop.

And we are going to do this by writing a little program

that calculates the factorial of a number.

In case you don't remember

what a factorial of a number does

If I were to tell you what "1 factorial" (is),

you normally write it

as 1 and an exclamation mark ( 1! ) like that.

It literally just means, well, that will just evaluate to 1.

If you say “2 factorial” ( 2! ),

that’s going to be equal to 2 × 1.

If you say “3 factorial” ( 3! ),

that's going to be equal to 3 × 2 × 1,

and which is going to be equal to 6.

And so, if you have any number’s factorial,

it's going to be that number times one number less than that,

times one number less than that, all the way down to 1.

So, with that out of the way,

let’s implement our factorial program.

And the way I'm going to do it is,

it's going to take an input from the user,

It’s going to prompt the user

to put a number that they want to take the factorial of

and then it's going to calculate the factorial.

And so what I'm gonna do is,

I'm going to use a function that Python provides for us.

And I'm using Python 2 in this video.

You'd have to do it slightly different —

actually, I'll talk about that in a second —

if you are using Python 3.

Python 2 is

what most implementations of Pythoner are built in

at the time of this video.

But there is a Python 3 out there

that is kind of a newer version.

I clarify that a bit in a future video.

But anyway, we're going to take an input from the user,

and we're going to prompt them with a message.

We're going to say,

”Enter a non-negative integer to take the factorial of:".

And just so that we get to familiarize ourselves with functions and all.

We're passing an argument to the function.

And the argument that we are passing to the function –

to the "input" function right over here is a string.

And “string” sounds like a very complicated thing,

but it really is just a string of characters.

You can view it as a bunch of text.

it will present this text to the user,

and it will give them a little input box.

And the user will put something into that input box.

It will evaluate what is in that input box.

And then, you could either view it as

having the variable number refer to it,

or put it in the variable number,

depending on how you want to visualize the variable.

If you are using Python 3,

you will want to call “eval”

on what’s returned from this (input) function.

This is if you are doing Python 3.

I am running Python 2 right now.

And if you want to do it exactly the way I'm doing it,

I am using the PyScripter IDE —

Integrated Development Environment.

It’s a free open-source project on a PC.

But there are many, many ways that you can edit Python.

You can really just do it on any text editor -- so anyway.

So, so far, all we've done is we've taken input from the user

and we're putting it in the variable number.

What’s really cool about Python is

we can just run this program as is

and just see what happens. So let’s do that.

Save it, and I'm going to run it.

This little play button runs it in this IDE.

And just like we said, it prompts the user:

“Enter a non-negative integer to take the factorial of:”.

So I don't know — le me type in 10.

And I [click] OK. Nothing happened.

Well of course nothing happened!

Because I didn't really tell this to do anything.

But if we type in “number”,

we'll see that it is now assigned to 10.

The variable is now referring to the number 10

So now we can use this “number” and take the factorial of it.

So what I'm going to do —

and we're going to do it iteratively. —

we are going to talk more about what that means in the future.

So I'm going to define another variable called product.

And I'm start product at 1.

What we're going to do is we're going to

start from 1 up to whatever number this is,

and keep multiplying the product

by each successively larger number.

So we're going to start —

So I'm going to set up a for loop here —

In next video I'm going to

really step through exactly what a for loop does.

Within the for loop, we're going to define a variable i.

This is kind of the classic variable to define in for loops.

And that variable is going to keep incrementing

to larger and larger values as we go through it.

So “for i in range” —

And for loops in Python are a little bit different

than if you were doing it in Javascript or Java.

I'll do a future video where we do that.

But range of number (Typing "range(number)") —

And just to understand what "range of number" does is,

it provides a list of numbers starting with 0,

up to 1 less than that "number".

So over here we already defined what "number" is — "number" is 10

So if I type in range of 10 — or let me do "range of number".

It gives me a list starting with 0 all the way to 9.

All the way to 1 less than than 10

So that the same thing as range of 10.

And what this for loop does is

it assigns this i to each term of the sequence –

So it starts with 1 — or each term of this list.

It starts with 1, and then it'll –

whatever you tell it to do.In the for loop, with i is equal to 1,

then it will assign i to to be 1.

Sorry. It will start with i equals 0, then it will go to i equals 1,

then i equals 2 then i equals 3 – so on and so forth –

all the way until you have gone all the way through the list.

And so what we can do here is —

within the for loop —

we can redefine product

to be equal to the product – the former product –

So our new product is going to be our old product times –

and I am going to multiply it – times i + 1.

We are going to step through it carefully in the next video.

But I want you to think about what it is doing already.

So right when we start, let’s say that

"number" ends up being 3.

So product gets set to 1.

And we say for i in range.

And then, if we do range of 3, then i is first going to be 0.

And so we are going to take our old product – so 1 – times i + 1.

Well i is going to be 0 so 0 + 1 is 1.

So it is going to be 1 × 1, [which] is going to be 1.

Then we are going to assign i to be 1.

This is what the for loop does.

It iterates.

It keeps incrementing,

(Well it doesn't always have to increment.)

It keeps changing the value of i as it goes through this list.

And so the next time around our product is 1.

But now i is 1. So 1 plus 1 is 2, times 1 is now going to be 2.

And then it will go – it will set i to be 2.

So it is going to be 2 + 1 times...

what product was from the last iteration – which was 2.

And so it is going to be 2 × 3 which is 6

And so when we are finally done with this for loop,

inside of product –

or I guess we can say product will be referring to

the actual factorial of the number inputted.

So then we can say "print product".

And in Python – in this case right here –

the interpreter knows to break out of this for loop

once it runs out of numbers to assign i to.

So, that’s why it doesn't run forever.

So, let’s see if what we did here actually works.

Let’s see if it actually works.

So let me – actually – write like this ("print(product)").

So let’s see if this things actually works.

So I'll save it. And then let me run it.

And so it’s asking me,

“Enter a non-negative integer to take the factorial of:”.

So let’s try it with 3 – Enter.

It gave me the right answer.

Let’s try it again.

So, “Enter a non-negative integer to take the factorial of:”.

I don't know, let’s try something large: 10.

It worked. [I'm] assuming that you can verify this for yourself.

So what we have done here is write a very simple program.

But, it already does something neat –

it takes a factorial of an arbitrary number.

In next video, we're going to

step through it much more carefully,

in case this kind of confused you – what this for loop did.

So, just hold with me for the next video, and watch that.

That has a little bit of a more careful explanation.