11 Team Activity: Functional Programming

Instructions

Work as a team as explained in the instructions for the lesson 2 team activity.

Purpose

Reinforce in your mind the concept that a function can be passed as an argument into another function.

Assignment

The CSV file named pupils.csv contains data about 100 students. Unfortunately, the data is not sorted. As a team, write a program that reads the contents of pupils.csv into a compound list, sorts the list by birthday from oldest to youngest, and then prints the list with the data about each student on a separate line.

Helpful Documentation

• The Reading Files article explains how to setup VS Code so that your Python program can read from a text file.
• The preparation content for lesson 7 explains how to use compound lists.
• The preparation content for lesson 9 explains how to read the contents of a text file into a list.
• The preparation content for this lesson explains higher-order functions, nested functions, lambda functions and how to call the Python built-in sorted function.

Steps

Do the following:

1. Download these two files: pupils.csv and pupils.py and save them in the same folder.
2. Open the pupils.csv file in VS Code and notice that it has three columns: givenName, surname, and birthdate.
3. Open the pupils.py file in VS Code. At the bottom of the file write a function named print_list that takes a list as a parameter and prints each element of the list on a separate line. In other words, this print_list function should include a for loop that prints each element on a separate line.
4. Near the top of pupils.py, below the three indexes, write the main function. Inside the main function, write statements to do the following:

   1. Call the read_compound_list function to read the pupils.csv file into a list named students_list.
   2. Write a lambda function that will extract the birthdate from a student.
   3. Write a call to the Python built-in sorted function that will sort the students_list by birthdate from oldest to youngest.
   4. Print the students_list by calling the print_list function.
5. At the bottom of the pupils.py file write a call to the main function.

Core Requirements

Your program must contain the following:

1. A function named print_list that takes a list as a parameter and prints the list with each element of the list on a separate line.
2. A function named main that calls read_compound_list and print_list.
3. Statements in the main function that sort the students_list by birthdate from oldest to youngest.

Stretch Challenges

If your team finishes the core requirements in less than an hour, complete one or more of these stretch challenges. Note that the stretch challenges are optional.

1. Within the main function, replace the code that sorts the students_list by birthdate, with code that sorts the students_list by given name.
2. Within the main function, replace the code that sorts the students_list by birthdate, with code that sorts the students_list by birth month and day. In other words, the code should sort the students_list by birthdate but ignore the year when a student was born.

Testing Procedure

Verify that your program works correctly by following each step in this testing procedure:

1. Run your program and ensure that your program’s output is sorted correctly as shown below.

   > python pupils.py
   Ordered from Oldest to Youngest
   ['Cody', 'Gjoni', '2008-01-14']
   ['Jakob', 'Moore', '2008-08-09']
   ['Dylan', 'Bradford', '2008-10-11']
   ['Chih-Yang', 'Olson', '2008-12-23']
   ['Camdon', 'Radke', '2009-01-31']
   ['Jacob', 'Ortiz', '2009-02-04']
   ['Tanner', 'McAllister', '2009-02-13']
   ['Aoi', 'Lee', '2009-02-22']
   ['Colton', 'Kent', '2009-02-25']
   ['Marco', 'Zeng', '2009-06-25']
       ⋮
   
   Ordered by Given Name
   ['Adam', 'Chase', '2009-08-04']
   ['Aidan', 'Havens', '2014-08-12']
   ['Alexander', 'Bingham', '2015-01-30']
   ['Amarsanaa', 'Cromar', '2010-07-15']
   ['Ammon', 'Reeder', '2014-11-22']
   ['Andrea', 'Omokoh', '2014-11-08']
   ['Aoi', 'Lee', '2009-02-22']
   ['Aranza', 'Billman', '2012-12-08']
   ['Benjamin', 'Rojas', '2010-12-24']
   ['Brody', 'Wilson', '2013-10-29']
       ⋮
   
   Ordered by Birth Month and Day
   ['Mitchel', 'Elliott', '2010-01-03']
   ['Nathan', 'Bowman', '2014-01-07']
   ['Christian', 'White', '2015-01-09']
   ['Manoel', 'Gonzalez', '2014-01-10']
   ['Cody', 'Gjoni', '2008-01-14']
   ['Curtis', 'Loveridge', '2011-01-14']
   ['Alexander', 'Bingham', '2015-01-30']
   ['Camdon', 'Radke', '2009-01-31']
   ['Jacob', 'Ortiz', '2009-02-04']
   ['Tanner', 'McAllister', '2009-02-13']
       ⋮

Sample Solution

Please work diligently with your team for the one hour meeting. After the meeting is over, please compare your solution to the sample solution or the stretch solution. Please do not look at the sample solution until you have either finished the program or diligently worked for at least one hour. At the end of the hour, if you are still struggling to complete the assignment, you may use the sample solution to help you finish.

Submission

When you have finished the activity, please report your progress via the associated I‑Learn quiz. When asked about which of the requirements you completed, feel free to include any work done during the team meeting or after the meeting, including work done with the help of the sample solution, if necessary. In short, report on what you were able to accomplish, regardless of when you completed it or if you needed help from the sample solution.