MIT programming in python Problem Set 1 Part C

Question

Following is the problem set from MIT opencourseware

Part C: Finding the right amount to save away

Your semiannual raise is .07 (7%)

Your investments have an annual return of 0.04 (4%)

The down payment is 0.25 (25%) of the cost of the house

The cost of the house that you are saving for is $1M.

I am now going to try to find the best rate of savings to achieve a down payment on a $1M house in 36 months. And I want your savings to be within $100 of the required down payment.I am stuck with the bisection search and 'It is not possible to pay the down payment in three years.' this output. I am new to programmers and English.Any help is appreciated.

And here is my code:

starting_salary = float(input("Enter your starting salary: "))
months_salary = starting_salary/12
total_cost = 1000000.0
semi_annual_rate = .07
investment_return = 0.04
down_payment = total_cost * 0.25
r = 0.04
current_savings = 0.0
#months = 36
tolerance = 100
steps = 0
high = 1.0
low = 0.0
guess = (high+low)/2.0
total_salaries = 0.0
def calSavings(current_savings,months_salary,guess,month):
    for months in range(0,37):
        if  months%6==1 and months >1:
            months_salary=months_salary*(1+semi_annual_rate)
        current_savings = current_savings + months_salary * guess
        current_savings = current_savings * (1+0.04/12)
    return(current_savings)
current_savings = calSavings(current_savings,months_salary,guess,1)
while abs(current_savings-down_payment)>=100:
    if  current_savings < down_payment:
        low = guess
    elif current_savings > down_payment:
        high = guess
    else:
        print("It is not possible to pay the down payment in three years.")
        break
    guess = (low+high)/2
    steps = steps +1
print("Best saving rate: ", guess)

When I run this code, it will be stuck. I don't know why. And I don't know how to determine which is the condition of output this "It is not possible to pay the down payment in three years."

I have seen Similar questions on stackoverflow like this and this but I am not quite followed.

Although you did put what you have done. You did not mention what exactly you are having problem with. Try to break the problem into parts and see if you can solve it that way. — MEdwin
– MEdwin, Commented Nov 19, 2018 at 12:15
how do you break out of the while loop ? Since neither current_savings nor down_payment are being updated — Hadi Farah
– Hadi Farah, Commented Nov 19, 2018 at 12:15
As I already said, your values are not updating. try adding this line: current_savings = calSavings(current_savings,months_salary,guess,1) inside the while loop. Also to break add these lines: if (steps > 1000): print("It is not possible to pay the down payment in three years.") break instead of else: print("It is not possible to pay the down payment in three years.") break — Hadi Farah
– Hadi Farah, Commented Nov 19, 2018 at 13:09
basically when running this sort of recursive calculation you need 2 parameters for your while loop: one that indicates a maximum amount of steps and one for when you reach your goal to a certain tolerance, so a tolerance value. — Hadi Farah
– Hadi Farah, Commented Nov 19, 2018 at 13:17

Nick · Accepted Answer · 2020-05-21 03:25:01Z

# user input
annual_salary = float(input('Enter your annual salary: '))
semi_annual_raise = 0.07
r = 0.04
portion_down_payment = 0.25
total_cost = 1000000
steps = 0
current_savings = 0
low = 0
high = 10000
guess_rate = (high + low)//2
# Use a while loop since we check UNTIL something happens.
while abs(current_savings - total_cost*portion_down_payment) >= 100:
    # Reset current_savings at the beginning of the loop
    current_savings = 0
    # Create a new variable for use within the for loop.
    for_annual_salary = annual_salary
    # convert guess_rate into a float
    rate = guess_rate/10000
    # Since we have a finite number of months, use a for loop to calculate
    # amount saved in that time.`enter code here`
    for month in range(36):
        # With indexing starting a zero, we need to calculate at the beginning
        # of the loop.
        if month % 6 == 0 and month > 0:
            for_annual_salary += for_annual_salary*semi_annual_raise
        # Set monthly_salary inside loop where annual_salary is modified
        monthly_salary = for_annual_salary/12
        # Calculate current savings
        current_savings += monthly_salary*rate+current_savings*r/12
    # The statement that makes this a bisection search
    if current_savings < total_cost*portion_down_payment:
        low = guess_rate
    else:
        high = guess_rate
    guess_rate = (high + low)//2
    steps += 1
    # The max amount of guesses needed is log base 2 of 10000 which is slightly
    # above 13. Once it gets to the 14th guess it breaks out of the while loop.
    if steps > 13:
        break

# output
if steps > 13:
    print('It is not possible to pay the down payment in three years.')
else:
    print('Best savings rate:', rate)
    print('Steps in bisection search:', steps)

Hadi Farah · Accepted Answer · 2018-11-19 13:33:02Z

I've already addressed most of my points in the comments, but I will recap: You are trying to solve a problem using a method called recursive solving, in this case using the bisection method.

The steps are as follows:

start with an initial guess you chose 0.5
Perform your calculations in a loop and iterate the initial guess, in this case you must account for the following:
Maximum number of steps before failure, remember we can always add 2 values and divide by 2, your result will tend to 0.999999.. otherwise
A certain tolerance, if your step size is not small enough 25% of 1 M is 250 000 and you might never hit that number exactly, that' why you make a tolerance interval, for example: anything between 250 000 and 251 000 --> break loop, show result.
Your if statements for changing low and high to adjust guess are correct, but you forget to re-initialize savings to 0 which means savings was going to infinity.

Now that's all said, here's a working version of your code:

starting_salary = 100000  # Assuming Annual Salary of 100k 
months_salary = starting_salary/12
total_cost = 1000000.0
semi_annual_rate = .07
investment_return = 0.04
down_payment = total_cost * 0.25
print("down payment: ", down_payment)
r = 0.04
current_savings = 0.0
#months = 36
tolerance = 100
steps = 0
high = 1.0
low = 0.0
guess = (high+low)/2.0
total_salaries = 0.0
tolerance = down_payment/100 # I chose this tolerance to say if my savings are between [down_payment - (downpayment + down_payment/100)]  result is admissible. (this is quite a high tolerance but you can change at leisure)
def calSavings(current_savings,months_salary,guess,month):
    for months in range(0,37):
        if  months%6==1 and months >1:
            months_salary=months_salary*(1+semi_annual_rate)
        current_savings = current_savings + months_salary * guess
    current_savings = current_savings * (1+0.04)
    return(current_savings)

while abs(current_savings-down_payment)>=100:
    current_savings = calSavings(current_savings,months_salary,guess,1)
    if  current_savings < down_payment:
        low = guess
        current_savings = 0.
    elif current_savings > down_payment + tolerance:
        high = guess
        current_savings = 0.
    if (steps > 100): # I chose a maximum step number of 100 because my tolerance is high
        print("It is not possible to pay the down payment in three years.")
        break
    guess = (low+high)/2
    steps = steps +1

print("Best saving rate: ", guess)
print("With current savings: ", current_savings)

Output:

down payment:  250000.0
Best saving rate:  0.656982421875
With current savings:  250072.3339667072
[Finished in 0.08s]

user8972021 · Accepted Answer · 2020-04-03 19:18:49Z

For answer visit the GitHub link - MIT has added Problem set solutions

Part C: Finding the right amount to save away

In Part B, you had a chance to explore how both the percentage of your salary that you save each month and your annual raise affect how long it takes you to save for a down payment. This is nice, but suppose you want to set a particular goal, e.g. to be able to afford the down payment in three years. How much should you save each month to achieve this? In this problem, you are going to write a program to answer that question. To simplify things, assume:

Your semiannual raise is .07 (7%)
Your investments have an annual return of 0.04 (4%)
The down payment is 0.25 (25%) of the cost of the house
The cost of the house that you are saving for is $1M.

You are now going to try to find the best rate of savings to achieve a down payment on a $1M house in 36 months. Since hitting this exactly is a challenge, we simply want your savings to be within $100 of the required down payment. In ps1c.py, write a program to calculate the best savings rate, as a function of your starting salary.

You should use bisection search to help you do this efficiently. You should keep track of the number of steps it takes your bisections search to finish. You should be able to reuse some of the code you wrote for part B in this problem.

Because we are searching for a value that is in principle a float, we are going to limit ourselves to two decimals of accuracy (i.e., we may want to save at 7.04% or 0.0704 in decimal – but we are not going to worry about the difference between 7.041% and 7.039%). This means we can search for an integer between 0 and 10000 (using integer division), and then convert it to a decimal percentage (using float division) to use when we are calculating the current_savings after 36 months. By using this range, there are only a finite number of numbers that we are searching over, as opposed to the infinite number of decimals between 0 and 1. This range will help prevent infinite loops. The reason we use 0 to 10000 is to account for two additional decimal places in the range 0% to 100%. Your code should print out a decimal (e.g. 0.0704 for 7.04%).

Try different inputs for your starting salary, and see how the percentage you need to save changes to reach your desired down payment. Also keep in mind it may not be possible for to save a down payment in a year and a half for some salaries. In this case your function should notify the user that it is not possible to save for the down payment in 36 months with a print statement. Please make your program print results in the format shown in the test cases below.

Note: There are multiple right ways to implement bisection search/number of steps so your results may not perfectly match those of the test case.

Hints:

● There may be multiple savings rates that yield a savings amount that is within $100 of the required down payment on a $1M house. In this case, you can just return any of the possible values.

● Depending on your stopping condition and how you compute a trial value for bisection search, your number of steps may vary slightly from the example test cases.

● Watch out for integer division when calculating if a percentage saved is appropriate and when calculating final decimal percentage savings rate.

● Remember to reset the appropriate variable(s) to their initial values for each iteration of bisection search.

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

MIT programming in python Problem Set 1 Part C

Part C: Finding the right amount to save away

3 Answers 3

Comments

Comments

Comments

Your Answer

Linked

Hot Network Questions

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

Part C: Finding the right amount to save away

3 Answers 3

Comments

Comments

Comments

Your Answer

Sign up or log in

Post as a guest

Linked

Related