CMPS-224 Lab 7 Counting with Python

Introduction

Resources: Python 3 Documentation Documentation
Python Lab 7 Materials

Files Needed: USPopulation.txt
The file contains the midyear population of the United States, in thousands, during the years 1950 through 1990. The first line in the file contains the population for 1950, the second line contains the population for 1951, and so forth.

Write a program that reads a file’s contents into a list. The program should then display the following:
The average annual change in population during the time period.
The year with the greatest increase in population during the time period.
The year with the smallest increase in population during the time period.

Code to open a file and read its contents into a list.

        # Open the file for reading.
        input_file = open('USPopulation.txt', 'r')
        
        # Read all the lines in the file into a list.
        yearly_population = input_file.readlines()
        
    

Pseudocode

        Open File
        Read in contents into a list
        Convert each element in list into a numerical data type
        Calculate the change in population size for each two years
        Set initial values for comparisons
        Evaluate the next element 
            Update as necessary
        Calculate Average Chnange by dividing the total change by the number of years
        

        # Setup variables
        yearly_change = []
        change = 0.0
        total_change = 0.0
        average_change = 0.0
        greatest_increase = 0.0
        smallest_increase = 0.0
        greatest_year = 0
        smallest_year = 0
    
        # Constant for the base year
        BASE_YEAR = 1950        
    

Conditions of Satisfactions

        The average annual change in population during the time period is 2,443.88
        The year with the greatest increase in population was 1955
        The year with the smallest increase in population was 1967
    

What to turn in