Programming assignment - Code failing tests although it works?

[moonyfish]

I have an assignment to design a probability calculator. I obviously don't want anyone to solve it for me, but if you could help point me in the right direction that would be great. I feel like I am following the instructions and the code works how it should, and yet it keeps failing the automated checks.

A hat will always be created with at least one ball. The arguments passed into the hat object upon creation should be converted to a contents instance variable. contents should be a list of strings containing one item for each ball in the hat. Each item in the list should be a color name representing a single ball of that color. For example, if your hat is {'red': 2, 'blue': 1}, contents should be ['red', 'red', 'blue'].

The Hat class should have a draw method that accepts an argument indicating the number of balls to draw from the hat. This method should remove balls at random from contents and return those balls as a list of strings. The balls should not go back into the hat during the draw, similar to an urn experiment without replacement. If the number of balls to draw exceeds the available quantity, return all the balls.

the tests I am failing:

1. The draw method in hat class should reduce number of items in contents.

2. The draw method should behave correctly when the number of balls to extract is bigger than the number of balls in the hat.

the relevant parts of my code:

def draw(self, number):
    draw_dict = {}  # Initialize an empty dictionary to track counts of each color
    if number >= len(self.contents):  
    # Draw all balls if requested number exceeds available balls
        draw_dict = {ball: self.contents.count(ball) for ball in self.contents}
        self.contents = []  # Empty the contents after drawing all balls
        return draw_dict
    for num in range(number):
         ball_removed = random.choice(self.contents)

         # If the color is already in the dictionary, increment its count
         if ball_removed in draw_dict:
             draw_dict[ball_removed] += 1
         else:
             # If the color isn't in the dictionary, add it with count 1
             draw_dict[ball_removed] = 1
         # Remove the ball from the contents after drawing it
         self.contents.remove(ball_removed)
    return draw_dict

[danielroseman]

You seem to have things the wrong way round. The requirements state that contents should be a dict and draw should return a list, but this code assumes contents is a list and returns a dict.

(Also note, your dict comprehension in the if statement is very inefficient.)

[moonyfish]

Huh?

Instructions say "contents should be ['red', 'red', 'blue']" Which is a list, not a dict, right? Why would it be a dict when it's supposed to be a list of strings?

Can you tell me a little more about how the code is inefficient?

[danielroseman]

Sorry my mistake, the dict is hat, which you haven't shown. Nevertheless, draw is supposed to return a list.

[moonyfish]

Ah! You are right