Question

Working in Python 2.7.

I have two different lists, A and B (simplified to make explanations more clear).

A = [1, 2, 4, 3, 5]
B = [2, 0, 3, 2, 1]

I would like to be able to compare the positional values of each list ex- A[1] v B[1]- and total up the instances in which A is larger (A “wins”), the instances when the two values are the same (A “ties”), and the instances when B is larger (A “losses”).

To make things a little more complicated I’m also using random.shuffle() to randomize the order of the list every time through a for loop.

I first tried using:

def listComp(listA, listB):
    Awins = 0
    Aties = 0
    Alosses = 0
    for i in range(0, whatever):
        random.shuffle(listA)
        random.shuffle(listB)
        if A[0] > B[0]:
            Awins += 1
        elif A[0] == B[0]:
            Aties += 1
        elif A[0] < B[0}:
            Alosses += 1

And then in each of the if statements, coding additional if statements to account for all the possible variations. Obviously, this gets very labor-intensive as the size of the list grows. There’s got to be an easier way, right?

Answer 1

Sounds like you want zip:

def compare(A,B):
    Awins = 0
    Aties = 0
    Alosses = 0
    for i in range(0, whatever):
        random.shuffle(listA)
        random.shuffle(listB)
        for a,b in zip(A,B):
            if a > b:
                Awins += 1
            elif a == b:
                Aties += 1
            else:
                Alosses += 1