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We are interviewing candidates for a job. We will call each candidate in order, represented by a Python list:

calls = ["Juan", "Zofia", "Amare", "Ezio", "Ananya"]

First, we’ll call "Juan", then "Zofia", etc.

In Python, we call the location of an element in a list its index.

Python lists are zero-indexed. This means that the first element in a list has index 0, rather than 1.

Here are the index numbers for the list calls:

Element Index
"Juan" 0
"Zofia" 1
"Amare" 2
"Ezio" 3
"Ananya" 4

In this example, the element with index 2 is "Amare".

We can select a single element from a list by using square brackets ([]) and the index of the list item. If we wanted to select the third element from the list, we’d use calls[2]:

print(calls[2])

Will output:

Amare

Note: When accessing elements of a list, you must use an int as the index. If you use a float, you will get an error. This can be especially tricky when using division. For example print(calls[4/2]) will result in an error, because 4/2 gets evaluated to the float 2.0.

To solve this problem, you can force the result of your division to be an int by using the int() function. int() takes a number and cuts off the decimal point. For example, int(5.9) and int(5.0) will both become 5. Therefore, calls[int(4/2)] will result in the same value as calls[2], whereas calls[4/2] will result in an error.

Instructions

1.

Use square brackets ([ and ]) to select the 4th employee from the list employees. Save it to the variable employee_four.

2.

Paste the following code into script.py:

print(employees[8])

What happens? Why?

3.

Selecting an element that does not exist produces an IndexError.

In the line of code that you pasted, change 8 to an index that exists so that you don’t get an IndexError.

Run your code again!

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