Warming up to Order Some Good Stuff

So you understand Katya’s functions, and have a bit more knowledge of the sharemarket than you might have expected. Now it’s time to start thinking about functions that will be useful in completing makeOrders!

Now your heuristic is up to you, and should certainl be your own creation. However, there are many functions which could be very useful for a variety of heuristics.

Brainstorming Useful Functions

For each of the following, don’t just write the function- also brainstorm with your peers where this function might be useful, and what kind of heuristic it would be used for.

Write & brainstorm… (single list functions)

  1. a function that returns the average of a list
  2. a function that finds the largest element of a list
  3. a function that finds the smallest element of a list
  4. a function that finds the difference between the largest and smallest values of a list

Write & brainstorm… (lists of lists)

  1. For a list of StockHistory, return the Stock with the largest average stock price (you might need something to help find the maximum average while using the tuple data type here!)
  2. For a list of StockHistory, return the Stock with the smallest difference between the largest and smallest values of a list

Once you feel comfortable with these functions and understand how they could be used, try and code up a heuristic! Then, it’s time for you to go to the NEXT LEVEL. You better head to our advanced heuristics room for that!