Welcome to the Treehouse Community

Want to collaborate on code errors? Have bugs you need feedback on? Looking for an extra set of eyes on your latest project? Get support with fellow developers, designers, and programmers of all backgrounds and skill levels here with the Treehouse Community! While you're at it, check out some resources Treehouse students have shared here.

Looking to learn something new?

Treehouse offers a seven day free trial for new students. Get access to thousands of hours of content and join thousands of Treehouse students and alumni in the community today.

Start your free trial

Python Python Collections (2016, retired 2019) Sets Set Math

Posted by Jacob Fong
Jacob Fong
3,754 Points

Python sets challenge help!

Hello, I've been working at this problem for a while now, and I can't get it to work in treehouse! The exact same code actually does work locally, which is weird.

Here's the problem:

Let's write some functions to explore set math a bit more. We're going to be using this COURSES dict in all of the examples. Don't change it, though! So, first, write a function named covers that accepts a single parameter, a set of topics. Have the function return a list of courses from COURSES where the supplied set and the course's value (also a set) overlap. For example, covers({"Python"}) would return ["Python Basics"].

Please help! Thanks.

sets.py 
COURSES = {
    "Python Basics": {"Python", "functions", "variables",
                      "booleans", "integers", "floats",
                      "arrays", "strings", "exceptions",
                      "conditions", "input", "loops"},
    "Java Basics": {"Java", "strings", "variables",
                    "input", "exceptions", "integers",
                    "booleans", "loops"},
    "PHP Basics": {"PHP", "variables", "conditions",
                   "integers", "floats", "strings",
                   "booleans", "HTML"},
    "Ruby Basics": {"Ruby", "strings", "floats",
                    "integers", "conditions",
                    "functions", "input"}
}

def covers(set_of_topics):
    list = []
    for course in COURSES:
        for topic in set_of_topics: 
            if topic in course:
                list.append(course)
    return(list)

1 Answer

Oliver Small
Oliver Small
12,578 Points
Oliver Small
Oliver Small
12,578 Points

Hey, just remember this is a question about using sets, so you will want to try use them in this challenge. You will want to find the intersection of the two sets which you can do using the & symbol:

def covers(topics):
    list = []
    for course in COURSES:
        if topics & COURSES[course]:
            list.append(course)
    return list