Project 6: Random Walk
Questions & Answers
What is standard deviation?
You don’t need to understand the details, if you do not already know what it means, but it is one measure of how spread out the dots are. Coefficient of Variance is another measure of spread.
How do we compute the standard deviation?
You could write your own function if you want, but it is simpler to import the statistics module and use functions defined there.
My numbers don’t match up to the example numbers. Should they be exactly the same?
Since we are dealing with random numbers, your results will be close but slightly different.
I was looking on the web, and somebody posted a solution to this project already, including screenshots. Can I use that, look at it for inspiration if I get stuck, maybe?
If you find it, tell your instructor. It is impossible to control everything people might do. But, educationally, posting those solutions is a form of cheating. Using that code and submitting it as your own is also a form of cheating. So don’t look at it, don’t use it. Do your own work. In the “real world” people find and borrow code form other people all the time. If you do that here though, the problem is that 1) you aren’t learning what we are trying to teach you, and 2) you are misrepresenting your abilities by taking advantage of someone else’s work. That’s NOT OK.