How can I define the variable "number" properly?

Question

For this challenge, I am supposed to call the square function and store the value returned in the variable result, but I am not sure how to create the variable.

squaring.py

def square(number):
    return number * number
result = square(number)

square(3)

Answer 1 · 2018-07-02T04:18:17Z

July 2, 2018 4:18am

Hi Shreya,

You're doing the right thing to create a variable: you use the desired variable name, plus the assignment operator (=) then the thing you want to assign to the variable.

Your mistake is that the expression you are assigning to the variable is invalid: number is not a declared variable so Python just crashes when it sees your first function call.

Note that the second time you call the function you have the syntax exactly right, but this time you're not assigning the result of evaluating the expression to your result variable.

If you want to just call square with a number directly (a so-called 'literal'), you can do exactly what you did on the last line, but prefix that line with the assignment result =

If, as your question title suggests, you want to call square with a value inside the a variable called number you could, on one line assign a number to the variable number then subsequently call your function with number as the given argument (just like you did on your second-from-last line).

Hope that's clear

Cheers

Alex

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Shreya Shettigar

Shreya Shettigar

How can I define the variable "number" properly?

1 Answer

Alex Koumparos

Alex Koumparos

Shreya Shettigar

Shreya Shettigar