How to use a loop then calculate the sum of a list?-CodePudding

I need to write a function "sum_reciprocals()" which takes 1 input argument, a positive integer "n", and returns 1 output value, the sum of the reciprocals of all integers from 1 to n (inclusive). The result should be returned as a floating point number, and rounded to 5 decimal places.

here is my code

def sum_reciprocals(n):
    x = [1]
    n = 10000
    for i in range(2,n 1):
        x.append(x[i-2] 1/x[i-1])
    sum_reciprocals = round(sum(x))
    return sum_reciprocals

But it says that "IndexError: list index out of range" on my fifth line.

CodePudding user response：

Can't really understand what's the point of this

x.append(x[i - 2]   1 / x[i - 1])

You can just iterate from 1 to n with i and add 1 / i to the total sum, like so

def sum_reciprocals(n):
    total = 0
    for i in range(1, n   1):
        total  = 1 / i

    return total

or using list comprehension with sum() function

def sum_reciprocals(n):
    return sum([1 / i for i in range(1, n   1)])

or even adding lambda expression to this

 sum_reciprocals = lambda n: sum([1 / i for i in range(1, n   1)])

Although last one will be a violation of PEP 8 E731 Code style standart (but it's good to know you can do that)

CodePudding user response：

Your list only has one element, but in the first iteration of the for loop you try to access the 0-th and the 1st element :)