Write a function that accepts two arguments: a list of scores, and your score. Return True if your score is higher than the mean of the total class.

better_than_average([2, 3], 5) # Returns True
better_than_average([100, 40, 34, 57, 29, 72, 57, 88], 75) # Returns True
better_than_average([41, 75, 72, 56, 80, 82, 81, 33], 50) # Returns False
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def better_than_average(class_points, your_points):
    total = sum(class_points + [your_points])
    return total/len(class_points) <= your_points 
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• Note: I previously had included a return True if total[..] else False. However, this is unnecessary due to the comparison operator (<=) returning the status of the comparison anyways.

• The following solutions included the consideration of the 'own score' in calculating the average.

def better_than_average(class_points, your_points):
    average = (sum(class_points) + your_points) / (len(class_points) + 1)
    return your_points > average
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def better_than_average(*args):
    return args[1] > sum(*args) / (len(args[0]) + 1.0)
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• Solution 2 is quite clever. It uses the *args syntax to take into account both passed values, yet it can still distinguish between the class_points/args[0] and your_points/args[1] variables via indexing.
  • Furthermore, using *args means that you don't even need to combine class_points and your_points ! You can just use sum on the entire thing, which does account for the latter value.
  • Though, this does means that you can only call len(foo) on the class_points (since that was already passed as a list), with then adding one to account for the single your_points value.