Question

Parallel Arrays are two arrays, often containing elements of different datatypes that are synced with a common index. For this problem you are going to create a function called FindHighest that will accept two parameters: names and calls. The names list will contain the names of individuals that work on a help desk. The calls list will contain the number of calls they received in one day. Your function will return back to main the name of the person who received the highest number of calls along with the number of calls they received.

In a prior problem, you wrote code that returned the index of where the highest value in that list was found. In another problem you returned the lowest value found in a list. This problem is very similar to the two you already solved in that you will not only be associating the index of where you found the highest value but also the value itself. Remember that when working with Parallel Arrays or Lists, the lists are synced with a common index. Therefore if you found the lowest value at index 3, that would correspond to index 3 in the other list.

For example given that we have the list names and calls with the following values:

names = ["Bob", "Mary", "Sue", "John", "Mike", "Becky"]
calls = [20, 11, 15, 32, 17, 28]

We know that the highest number in calls is 32. That value corresponds to John because John is at index value 3. This means we can write:

highest_calls = 32
highest_name = names[3]

As with the other problems in this unit, the best way to start coding is to open VS Code or IDLE and write your function. You can use the following code to test your function:

def main():
    #variables
    names = ["Bob", "Mary", "Sue", "John", "Mike", "Becky"]
    calls = [20, 11, 15, 32, 17, 28]
    highest_name = str()
    highest_calls = int()

    highest_name, highest_calls = FindHighest(names, calls)
    print(highest_name, "\t", highest_calls)
main()

If you run your code using the above to test, if your code is working it should print out:

John     32

If you see this output it is safe to move your function code only to Codio for further testing. Codio will test your program by calling your function. It will use two different sets of testing data. Both sets have different names and calls and a different number of names and calls. This means that when you solve this problem, your loop examining the calls list, needs to accommodate for lists of different sizes. (HINT: use the len() function.)

Answer 1

def FindHighest(names, calls):
    maxIndex = 0
    for i in range(1,len(calls)):
        if calls[maxIndex] < calls[i]:
            maxIndex = i
    return names[maxIndex], calls[maxIndex]

def main():
    #variables
    names = ["Bob", "Mary", "Sue", "John", "Mike", "Becky"]
    calls = [20, 11, 15, 32, 17, 28]
    highest_name = str()
    highest_calls = int()
    highest_name, highest_calls = FindHighest(names, calls)
    print(highest_name, "\t", highest_calls)

main()