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Python

Posted by Vlad Bitca
Vlad Bitca
Courses Plus Student 2,702 Points

Help with Practice Creating and Using Functions in Python

I'm stuck

Let's create a function that determines if a specific value is odd. Let's name the function is_odd and have it declare a single parameter. It should return True if the value is not divisible by 2.

def is_odd(number):
    is_odd = number % 2 == 0
    return is_odd + 1

Ran 1 test in 0.000s
OK
F.
======================================================================
FAIL: test_evens (__main__.TestFunctionDefinitionExecution)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "", line 59, in test_evens
AssertionError: 2 is not false : Uh oh, 2 is even but it is_odd(2) returned True

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Ran 2 tests in 0.000s
FAILED (failures=1)

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1 Answer

Louise St. Germain
Louise St. Germain
19,425 Points

Hi Vlad,

There are a couple of things here. One is that you have your comparison backwards:

# This will be True if the number is even, but you are setting it to is_odd
number % 2 == 0

# To check for an odd number, use:
number % 2 == 1

Also, in your code, is_odd turns out to be either True or False. But then you add 1 to it (not sure why?), which changes it from a boolean to an integer. So your code is returning either 1 or 2, when it should be returning either True or False.

If you want, you can simplify the contents of your function to a single line, by directly returning the results of your comparison. For example, these two are equivalent:

# A corrected version of your original code.
# I might put parentheses around the right side of your first line,
# just to make it clearer what is happening.
def is_odd(number):
    is_odd = (number % 2 == 1)
    return is_odd

# This code returns the same thing:
def is_odd(number):
    return number % 2 == 1

I hope this helps!