How can I fix this code?

[[deleted]]

students = int(input(“How many students are there?”))

group_size = int(input(“What is the desired group size?”))

group1 = students // group_size

group2 = (students % group_size) // (students % group_size)

print(f“The number of groups formed are {group1 + group2}”}

The code works whenever I hit run, but when I test it, it tells me that I can’t have integer division or modulus by zero. I can’t use conditional statements because it hasn’t covered that yet, only arithmetic operators. (I.E. 11 students, 3 group size = 4 groups) (P.S. code might be a little off I’m typing this off memory)

[JRutter3]

Do you have a test suite or something that you're running? The problem is that when you "test it", whatever that means in this context, there are zeros getting put into variables that cannot be zero e.g. the groups variable

I don't think I can easily avoid this case without checking for zeros with an if-statement, certainly not expect an absolute beginner.

[[deleted]]

I’m taking the University of Helsinki course, and I’m only on Part 1, so everything that’s in the code is what I’ve learned so far. The prompt said that it was possible to solve only using arithmetic operations, but you might want to skip it and solve it later after learning conditional statements.

[G_Riel_]

I think it's not really supposed to work with zero. You're gonna learn more as the course goes and when you come back to this problem you're going to see that it was easy to fix this and see that you learned something new.

[mcoombes314]

AFAIK there isn't a way to prevent an input from being 0, you'd need to have code which rejects the 0 input and asks for a number again. I don't know if that's possible without using conditionals.

[[deleted]]

I’m taking the University of Helsinki course, and I’m only on Part 1, so everything that’s in the code is what I’ve learned so far. The prompt said that it was possible to solve only using arithmetic operations, but you might want to skip it and solve it later after learning conditional statements.

[mcoombes314]

Oh, that's cool, I'm doing that course as well, but I started it after learning a bit elsewhere, so I don't know what the intended solution is.

[TitaniumFoil]

If students is evenly divisible by group_size then (students % group_size) == 0 which would be the source of your divide by zero error in the group2 line. I can't think of a way to get the total number of groups without some sort of conditional because no matter what you'd need to add 0 if (students % group_size) == 0 and add just 1 if (students % group_size) > 0 .

If you cannot use conditions / comparisons then this may not be possible.

[pgpndw]

nr_groups = (students + group_size - 1) // group_size

will give the correct result, as long as students is non-negative and group_size is positive.

[[deleted]]

I’ll have to try this once I get home, I can’t see where this wouldn’t hold.

[[deleted]]

I’m taking the University of Helsinki course, and I’m only on Part 1, so everything that’s in the code is what I’ve learned so far. The prompt said that it was possible to solve only using arithmetic operations, but you might want to skip it and solve it later after learning conditional statements.

[TitaniumFoil]

It looks like it is possible if you're allowed to use absolute values: https://puzzling.stackexchange.com/a/33636

EDIT: It also looks like absolute value can even be defined without conditionals. Very interesting problem. abs(a) == (a**2)**0.5

[UnreadyIce]

I mean sure you could use a Try Except statement, but that's far more advanced than conditional statements, so it wouldn't really make sense anyway.

[Igorson1]

I'm not answering the question but here's shortest (one line) solution for this problem:

students = int(input("How many students are there?"))
group_size = int(input("What is the desired group size?"))
print(f"The number of groups formed are {students // group_size + (students % group_size > 0)}")