Question

Why do I get an error of "can’t multiply sequence by non-int of type ‘float’"? from the following code:

def nestEgVariable(salary, save, growthRates):
    SavingsRecord = []
    fund = 0
    depositPerYear = salary * save * 0.01
    for i in growthRates:  
        fund = fund * (1 + 0.01 * growthRates) + depositPerYear
        SavingsRecord += [fund,]
    return SavingsRecord 


print nestEgVariable(10000,10,[3,4,5,0,3])

Answer 1

for i in growthRates:  
    fund = fund * (1 + 0.01 * growthRates) + depositPerYear

should be:

for i in growthRates:  
    fund = fund * (1 + 0.01 * i) + depositPerYear

You are multiplying 0.01 with the growthRates list object. Multiplying a list by an integer is valid (it’s overloaded syntactic sugar that allows you to create an extended a list with copies of its element references).

Example:

>>> 2 * [1,2]
[1, 2, 1, 2]