Basic Definitions VIII

Question 1

abstraction

Answer 1

Generalization by reducing the information content of a concept. Functions in Python can be used to group a number of program statements with a single name, abstracting out the details and making the program easier to understand.

Question 2

constant

Answer 2

A numerical value that does not change during the execution of a program. It is conventional to use names with all uppercase letters to repesent constants, though Python programs rely on the discipline of the programmers to enforce this, since there is no language mechanism to support true constants in Python.

Question 3

nested loop

Answer 3

A loop inside the body of another loop.

Question 4

random

Answer 4

Having no specific pattern. Unpredictable. Computers are designed to be predicatable, and it is not possible to get a truly random value from a computer. Certain functions produce sequences of values that appear as if they were random, and it is these psuedorandom values that we get from Python.

Question 5

trichotomy

Answer 5

Given any real numbers a and b, exactly one of the following relations holds: a < b, a > b, or a = b. Thus when you can establish that two of the relations are false, you can assume the remaining one is true.