im new to python and im trying to solve this problem for school.
Airlines find that each passenger who reserves a seat fails to turn up with probability q independently of the other passengers. So Airline A always sell n tickets for their n−1 seat aeroplane while Airline B always sell 2n tickets for their n − 2 seat aeroplane. Which is more often over-booked?
This is my code:
import random
arrive = [True, False]
def airline_a(q, n, sims):
sim_counter = 0
reserved_seats = []
overbooked = 0
for x in range(n):
reserved_seats.append(x)
while sim_counter != sims:
passengers = 0
for x in range(len(reserved_seats)):
success = random.choices(arrive, weights=(100 - (q * 100), q * 100), k=1)
if success == True:
passengers += 1
if passengers > n - 1:
overbooked += 1
sim_counter += 1
print("Results: ")
print(f"Probability that Airline A is overbooked: ", overbooked / sims)
airline_a(.7, 100, 1000)
I am supposed to do a similar function for airline B and compare both values, however i came across an issue The problem is that the output is always 0. I dont quite understand what I'm doing wrong.
The problem with your code is this line: if success == True:. If you try printing success, it outputs either [True] or [False]. You can fix this by taking the first value of success in the if statement like this:
if success[0] == True:
passengers += 1
and to simplify the code a bit:
if success[0]:
passengers += 1
Change your code to the following to fix the error, however the count for the variable passengers will remain below the variable n, still resulting 0, so try and reduce the value of n or by reducing the value of q:
import random
arrive = [True, False]
def airline_a(q, n, sims):
sim_counter = 0
reserved_seats = []
overbooked = 0
for x in range(n):
reserved_seats.append(x)
while sim_counter != sims:
passengers = 0
for x in range(len(reserved_seats)):
success = random.choices(arrive, weights=(100 - (q * 100), q * 100), k=1)
if success[0]:
passengers += 1
if passengers > n - 1:
overbooked += 1
sim_counter += 1
print("Results: ")
print(f"Probability that Airline A is overbooked: ", overbooked / sims)
airline_a(.7, 100, 1000)
For an explanation on random.choices() visit the following link