Can't this be simplified using .sort()?

Question

I could use something like

    max_count = 0
    for key, value in dictionary.items():
        if len(value) > max_count:
            max_count = len(value)
            name = key
    return name

But, can't this be simplified with .sort()?

teachers.py

# The dictionary will look something like:
# {'Andrew Chalkley': ['jQuery Basics', 'Node.js Basics'],
#  'Kenneth Love': ['Python Basics', 'Python Collections']}
#
# Each key will be a Teacher and the value will be a list of courses.
#
# Your code goes below here.
def num_teachers(dictionary):
    return len(dictionary.keys())

def num_courses(dictionary):
    return sum(len(values) for values in dictionary.values())

def courses(dictionary):
    course_names = []
    for values in dictionary.values():
        course_names += values
    return course_names

def most_courses(dictionary):
    name = lists.sort(values)
    return key[-1]

def stats(dictionary):
    lists = []
    for key, values in dictionary.items():
        lists.append([key, len(values)])
    return lists

Answer 1 · 2017-08-23T00:03:09Z

August 23, 2017 12:03am

I don't understand this syntax (neither did my Python program): "num_courses.pop(:)".

But just conceptually, since you want to rank the entries by the number of values but return the key associated with them, it doesn't seem like there's any way to apply a sort that would lead to the required result.

Welcome to the Treehouse Community

Looking to learn something new?

Gavin Schilling

Gavin Schilling

Can't this be simplified using .sort()?

1 Answer

Steven Parker

Steven Parker