Multiple if statements in list comprehension with one iterator

Question

I was studying list comprehension and came across the possibility of adding several conditions. I do not know what behavior I expected, but I cannot explain what I am getting. Why does 1 turn into 3, 2 remains a 2, and 3 turns into 6?

a = [x if x % 2 == 0 else x * 2 if x % 3 == 0 else x * 3 for x in range(1, 11)]

output:

[3, 2, 6, 4, 15, 6, 21, 8, 18, 10]

Answer 1

Re-writing as a loop and converting the conditional expressions to full if/elif/else statements might help explain it:

a = []
for x in range(1, 11):
    if x % 2 == 0:
        temp = x
    elif x % 3 == 0:
        temp = x * 2
    else:
        temp = x * 3
    a.append(temp)