Question

def greedyAdvisor(subjects, maxWork, comparator):
    '''subjects is a dictionary with keys classes and values of tuples of class value and class work. maxWork is the maximum work a student wants to put in. comparator is a function that takes two tuples of the aforementioned class value/class work variety and returns which one has a higher value. The function returns a dictionary with the most valuable classes to take within the given parameter of the willingness to work. I am supposed to use a greedy algorithem'''
    greedy_dict = {}
    highest_subjects = []
    total_work = 0
    while total_work < maxWork:
        highest_value = 0, 0
        highest_class = 0.0 
        for i in subjects:
            if comparator (subjects[i], highest_value) and i not in highest_subjects and total_work + int(subjects[i][WORK]) <= maxWork:
                highest_value = subjects[i]
                highest_class = i
                print highest_class, highest_value
        highest_subjects.append(highest_class)
        total_work += int(highest_value[WORK])
        greedy_dict[highest_class] = highest_value
    print greedy_dict

    return greedy_dict

the data, subjects is a dictionary which maps courses like 6.00, 7.01, etc to tuples with values 1-10 for the value of the class and workload 1-20 for how many hours a problem is supposed to take. Well it started in a text file and I turned it into a dictionary just dandy. The problem is from mit ocw intro to programming problem 8, the text is in a file called subjects.txt. I hope this addressed your concerns about the data.

The problem I’m having is the subjects dictionary has class values up to 10, but the greedy_dictionary keeps thinking the maximum value is 9. The comparator in the parameters is a function which returns True if the first tuple[VALUE] is greater than the second tuple[VALUE].

Answer 1

It is… if you’re comparing strings.

>>> '10' < '9'
True

Try converting them to numbers first.