I tried my own version of this code and I'm not sure what's wrong.

This relates to scope - i.e. the variables you've declared inside your function can only be accessed inside the function.

Here are a couple of possible solutions:

def trythis():
    name = str(input("What is your name?")) 
    num1 = int(input("First number"))
    num2 = int(input("Second number"))
    answer = (num1 + num2)
    print("Hello {}, your answer is {}".format(name, answer))

trythis()

This first option just moves your print statement inside the function so that it can access the name and answer variables.

def trythis():
    name = str(input("What is your name?")) 
    num1 = int(input("First number"))
    num2 = int(input("Second number"))
    answer = (num1 + num2)
    return name, answer

name, answer = trythis()
print("Hello {}, your answer is {}".format(name, answer))

If you want to access name and answer outside the function, you have to return them, then assign the result to global variables (that's what I've done on the line before the print statement). You've probably not come across returning more than one variable from a function yet, so don't worry if you're not completely comfortable with this. The first option is probably the best one to go with for now.

trythis() is the function call. It is you telling Python to run the code inside the function. If you run the script containing only a function definition and no call to run it, nothing will happen.

Return is used when you actually want to get some information out of the function (like I did in the second example above). But in the first example there's no need to since the print statement happens inside the function.

If you wanted to include name, num1 and num2 in the parameters of the function, it would look like this:

def trythis(name, num1, num2):
    answer = (num1 + num2)
    print("Hello {}, your answer is {}".format(name, answer))

name = str(input("What is your name?")) 
num1 = int(input("First number"))
num2 = int(input("Second number"))

trythis(name, num1, num2)

Notice that your function now only contains two lines of code, but you pass values for name, num1 and num2 that you defined outside the function.

Hello, thanks for your reply! I am very relieved to see how close I was to blindly writing a functional piece of code. I have a few questions, however:

Why do I have to add "trythis()" at the bottom of the code (from python's perspective)? Why is it incorrect to include "return" and then "print". Is it just because it's redundant? Would it be wrong to include "name", "num1", and "num2" in the parameters of the function? If so, what are the correct parameters to include in a function?

Thank you again for your answer!!!

That actually makes perfect sense, thank you so much. Just one last question:

When would you want to leave the function without parameters, and when would you want to include them? What's the advantage to including a parameter?