CS101: Data Structures

Activity 03: Loops, Conditionals, Lists, Dictionaries and Sets

Assigned and Due

• Assigned: Friday, 18th September 2026

• Due and Expiration: Monday, 21st September 2026 by classtime.

Note: the expiration date is the last date you can submit your work for a grade.

Table of contents

• CS101: Data Structures
  • Assigned and Due
  • Table of contents
  • Deliverables
  • Project Goals
  • Getting Started with UV
  • Part 1: Tutorial 1 - The Loop & Conditional Dungeon
  • Part 2: Tutorial 2 - The Word Detective Case File
  • Part 3: Tutorial 3 - The Pattern Visualizer (Capstone)
  • Part 4: Tutorial 4 - The Guild Roster
  • Reflection Questions
  • Checking Your Work

Note: Parts of this work were enhanced by Claude.

Deliverables

You are to complete and push to your repository the following files:

• tutorials/tutorial_01_loops_and_conditionals/dungeon.py - Completed Python source code
• tutorials/tutorial_02_strings_and_dictionaries/detective.py - Completed Python source code
• tutorials/tutorial_03_pattern_visualizer/patterns.py - Explored and run (no edits required)
• tutorials/tutorial_04_sets_and_comprehensions/roster.py - Completed Python source code
• writing/reflection.md - Reflection document with answers to all questions

Project Goals

• To practice reading and debugging for/while loops and if/elif/else conditionals.
• To practice string manipulation methods and building/looping over dictionaries.
• To connect these fundamentals to real, visual applications (fractals, heatmaps, charts).
• To build confidence fixing "almost-working" code, a core software engineering skill.
• To practice writing sets, list comprehensions, and dictionary comprehensions from scratch.

Getting Started with UV

Tutorials 1 and 2 in this activity only use Python's standard library, so you can run them directly with python3 -- no extra setup required.

Tutorial 3 adds visualization libraries (matplotlib, plotly, numpy), so that tutorial uses UV, the same Python package manager from Activity 01, to install those dependencies in an isolated environment. Tutorial 4 also uses UV to run its project, but only needs the standard library. If you haven't installed UV yet, see the Activity 01 README or run:

# MacOS (Homebrew)
brew install uv

# MacOS/Linux (curl)
curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh

# Windows (PowerShell)
powershell -c "irm https://astral.sh/uv/install.ps1 | iex"

Verify your installation with:

uv --version

Part 1: Tutorial 1 - The Loop & Conditional Dungeon

In this tutorial, you will explore a dungeon full of loops and conditionals -- each function almost works, but has one small bug for you to find and fix using the TODO/Hint comments provided.

Location: tutorials/tutorial_01_loops_and_conditionals/

What you will do:

1. Read each function's docstring to understand what it should do
2. Fix the one bug in each function, guided by the TODO/Hint comments
3. Run the code and confirm your output matches the # Expected: comments

This tutorial only uses Python's standard library, so no UV project or extra dependencies are needed -- just run it with python3.

Getting Started:

cd tutorials/tutorial_01_loops_and_conditionals
python3 dungeon.py

Part 2: Tutorial 2 - The Word Detective Case File

In this tutorial, you will crack a case by cleaning up a suspicious message using string methods and tallying word usage using a dictionary. Each function has one small bug for you to find and fix.

Location: tutorials/tutorial_02_strings_and_dictionaries/

What you will do:

1. Fix bugs in string manipulation functions (.lower(), .replace(), .split(), .strip())
2. Fix bugs in dictionary-building and dictionary-reporting functions
3. Run the code and confirm your output matches the # Expected: comments

This tutorial only uses Python's standard library, so no UV project or extra dependencies are needed -- just run it with python3.

Getting Started:

cd tutorials/tutorial_02_strings_and_dictionaries
python3 detective.py

Part 3: Tutorial 3 - The Pattern Visualizer (Capstone)

In this tutorial, all the code is already complete and correct -- no bugs to fix! Instead, you will run and read code that reuses the loop, conditional, string, and dictionary concepts from Tutorials 1 and 2 to generate a Sierpinski triangle fractal, an interactive prime/even/odd heatmap, and a word-frequency bar chart.

Location: tutorials/tutorial_03_pattern_visualizer/

What you will do:

1. Initialize a UV project with required dependencies
2. Run the provided code to generate all three visualizations
3. Read through the code and connect each visualization back to the loop/conditional/string/dictionary concepts from Tutorials 1 and 2

This tutorial requires matplotlib, plotly, and numpy, so it uses UV to manage those dependencies in an isolated environment.

Getting Started:

cd tutorials/tutorial_03_pattern_visualizer
uv init
uv add matplotlib plotly numpy
uv run patterns.py

Part 4: Tutorial 4 - The Guild Roster

In this tutorial, you will help organize an adventurer's guild by writing your own sets, list comprehensions, and dictionary comprehensions -- compact tools for building and filtering collections of data.

Location: tutorials/tutorial_04_sets_and_comprehensions/

What you will do:

1. Write code for 5 TODOs, guided by the TODO/Hint comments
2. Practice building sets and using set intersection (&) and difference (-)
3. Practice writing list comprehensions and dictionary comprehensions
4. Run the code and confirm your output matches the # Expected: comments

This tutorial only uses Python's standard library, so no extra dependencies are needed.

Getting Started:

cd tutorials/tutorial_04_sets_and_comprehensions
uv init
uv run roster.py

Reflection Questions

After completing all three tutorials, answer the reflection questions in the writing/reflection.md file. These questions will help you think about debugging, logical operators, string/dictionary processing, and how these concepts power real visualizations.

Checking Your Work

To check if your work meets the assignment requirements, you can use GatorGrade:

gatorgrade --config config/gatorgrade.yml

This will automatically verify:

• All required files exist
• All TODO markers have been removed
• The reflection document is complete
• You have made at least 5 commits to your repository

Note: Make sure to commit your changes regularly throughout the activity using:

git add .
git commit -m "Descriptive message about your changes"
git push

Good luck, and enjoy debugging your way through loops, conditionals, strings, and dictionaries!