2.1 If/Elif/Else - IP
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>> Hello everyone and welcome back to
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Intro to Python here on Cybrary on-demand.
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This is going to be lesson one of
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our second module and in this lesson,
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we're going to be focusing on if, elif,
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and else as they apply to
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the discipline of Python programming.
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In this lesson, we've got two primary objectives.
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We're going to learn how to apply Boolean logic,
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how to apply truth and falsehood to Python,
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and then we're going to learn how to use
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a properly formatted if statement in Python.
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Now for those who've watched the other videos,
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you may notice a difference here,
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which is that my face is no longer in
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the bottom right of your screen.
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There are two excellent reasons for that.
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One, it actually takes
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a shockingly long time to do
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my hair in the morning and two,
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a little bit more seriously,
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because we're doing
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some actual on-screen programming right now,
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we want to make sure we have all the screen real estate
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we possibly can so I'm not going to
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be onscreen very much and we're just going to be
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focusing on the actual code on the screen.
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Slightly different format. Hopefully,
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it doesn't trip you up.
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If you really need to see my face on this,
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you can Photoshop it all and feel better.
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But if you really need to see
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my face on the videos I'm making, I guess.
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Hi, mom. I'm glad you're proud of me.
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That's probably about the only person.
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Like I mentioned in this video,
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we're going to be focusing on if,
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elif, and else.
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If, elif, else is a paradigm that we actually learned
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in the last module where
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we were talking about the concept of flow control,
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which you may remember is
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an execution decision based upon some internal logic.
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We're going to crack into our Vim here.
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Again, we got an Ubuntu 64-bit Vim.
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I'm working in Terminator right now,
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and we're just going to actually
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start out working in the interpreter.
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We're not even going to start with a script.
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When we're using an if statement,
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what we're trying to do is we're trying to
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evaluate that internal logic.
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We're trying to set some important value,
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we're trying to make some decision based upon it.
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We're going to set a couple of initial values
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so that we have something to work with.
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[NOISE]
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We have three initial values set,
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x equals TestString, y equals 10,
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and z equals negative 15.
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Now the way we're going to structure this if statement,
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there's no parentheses, wrong language,
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is by writing the word if all lowercase.
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In Python that's a keyword.
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It's not a function or anything like that.
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It's just a keyword. Excuse me, hiccup there.
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We've got our if statement and then we're going to
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apply conditional statement,
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and these here in these brackets is
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just a standard value, a fake variable.
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We're actually going to replace it with if
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y is greater than two.
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Now, remember, because
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this statement is subordinate to our if,
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this is a subordinate clause to our if statement,
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we're going to tab in or four spaces,
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whatever your style is,
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so long as it's consistent, focus on that.
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If y is greater than two,
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print y minus 2.
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In our interpreter, you may have noticed
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it still hasn't printed anything out.
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The REPL hasn't actually
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performed a print and that's because of the fact that
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if statements and other statements that have
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subordinate code actually give
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the interpreter context and say
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it's not actually time to execute yet.
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Get the rest of the code, get the rest of
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the context and then perform the operation.
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Here you can see that it prints the number 8,
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which is y minus 2.
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Fantastic. Now we can do, for example,
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if y is greater than z, print y.
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But if we want to handle the case where
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perhaps y is less than z,
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that's where we apply the elif that we learned about.
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Now, I'll remind you that elif is else if.
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It is an if statement that only
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potentially evaluates if the
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preceding if statement turns out to be false.
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If z is greater than y, print z.
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What's great here is because we have
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a bimodal situation where it is probably,
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actually that's not entirely great.
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But in general, when you have bimodal situations,
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you don't necessarily have to have an else.
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We have to have one here because of the fact that
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it is possible for y to be greater than z,
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z to be greater than y, or z and y to be equal.
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[NOISE] We run that
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and we see of course that 10 is greater than negative 15.
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But that code gives a great demonstration of
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the three components of an if statement.
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You have if with your conditional evaluation.
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You have the subordinate code that's tabbed in.
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You have else if or elif
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with the second possible condition.
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Then you have that subordinate code tabbed in.
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Then you have your else statement.
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Again, your else statement is,
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if none of the preceding if statements evaluated to true,
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if all of the preceding
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conditionals turned out to be false,
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then just execute this code.
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Now, this actually right here
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is a simple implementation of what's
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called a max function or
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a function to find the larger number,
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and one of your exercises in the lab
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that's going to be coming up about half-time
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of this module is actually going to
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be creating this code.
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It's worth looking at and
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understanding exactly how that works.
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Now we're going to step out of our interpreter
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here for just a minute.
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We're actually going to write ourselves
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a little bit of a script.
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Vim and we're going to do if_then.py.
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[NOISE] We're going to put our shebang line in here.
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There's also something else that I want to
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mention that actually I did not
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bring up in the syntax video
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because we didn't have a good cause for it.
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But Python does have the option of
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commenting or writing things
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into your script that don't get executed or interpreted.
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The way that's done is by using
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this pound sign hashtag, whatever you want to call it,
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and with that you can just write,
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this is a Python comment.
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You can see that if you were to write it by
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itself in Vim because I have context on it.
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It's going to give it different colors.
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But that's how you can put comments in your code.
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Remember when we talked about
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the design philosophy of Python,
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it's very important to write readable code.
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If you're going to create what
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may have to be a complex function,
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it's important to have your comments in there so that
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people understand what that function is supposed to do.
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This first function, we're going to evaluate two strings.
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The first string is going to be
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s1 and the second string is going to be s2.
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What we're going to do here is if s1 equals s2.
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You can see that I have auto-indent and I have
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some contexts built into my Vim so it tabbed for me.
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If s1 equals s2 or if s1 is the same as s2,
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print s1 else print s1 plus s2.
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We mostly separate out of the interpreter
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there just so that you could see
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writing it into a script
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and so you can get a little familiar with that.
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Again, we're going to give
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these permissions to allow it to execute.
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[NOISE] There you go.
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You can see that it printed those two lines out together
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because again, the conditional evaluated.
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Now over to the side you will see
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a document that says if assignment.
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That's just going to be a whole bunch of
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example if statements and you can feel free
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to peruse that and see if you can
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figure those out and write some code yourself.
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In the lab that is going to be at
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the end or at the midpoint of Module 2.
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We're going to examine if statements as well
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as the other lessons that are coming down the road.
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If you want to get more practice with those,
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feel free to crack that open and start in on those
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first and then come back and watch
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the next videos before you get to that lab.
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That's going to be the end of this lesson.
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In this lesson again,
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we talked about how Boolean logic applies to Python,
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the idea of evaluating truth with an if statement,
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and then we learned how to
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properly format an if statement.
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As always, I'm your instructor
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Joe Perry and I'm really glad to have you all here.
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I look forward to having you in our next lesson,
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which is going to be discussing for-loops in Python.
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If you have any questions of course,
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please feel free to reach out to me or one
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of your course mentors if you have them.
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Thank you as always for watching this,
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Intro to Python on Cybrary on-demand.
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