Variable not updating from While loop

Question

I am having issues getting my while loop to function properly. This is for my class, and I can't seem to find out what exactly is going on. For some reason it stops adding numbers to the "totalStars" variable after the 4th number. I can't seem to find anything that will help me. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

# Initialize variables.
totalStars = 0  # total of star ratings.
numPatrons = 0  # keep track of number of patrons


# Get input.
numStarsString = input("Enter rating for featured movie: ")

# Convert to double.
numStars = float(numStarsString)

# Write while loop here
while numStars > -1:
    numPatrons +=1
    numStars = float(input("Enter rating for featured movie: "))
    if numStars >= 0 and numStars <=4:
        totalStars += numStars
    elif numStars < 0:
        numStars = -1
    else:
        print("Please enter a number 0 to 4")
        numPatrons -= 1
# Calculate average star rating

averageStars = float(totalStars / numPatrons)
print(totalStars)
print(numPatrons)
print("Average Star Value: " + str(averageStars))

What's your input, output, desired output? How do you know something is wrong? — Mad Physicist
– Mad Physicist, Commented Oct 27, 2019 at 3:06

Aaron Cyrman · Accepted Answer · 2019-10-27 03:17:45Z

1

Maybe an alternative could be this:

# Initialize variables.
totalStars = 0  # total of star ratings.
numPatrons = 0  # keep track of number of patrons

# Write while loop here
while True:
  # Get input
  numStarsString = input("Enter rating for featured movie: ")
  # Convert to double
  numStars = float(numStarsString)
  if numStars >= 0 and numStars <=4:
    totalStars += numStars
    numPatrons += 1
  elif numStars == -1:
    break
  else:
    print("Wrong input. Please enter a number 0 to 4")

# Calculate average star rating
print("Total stars: " + str(totalStars))
print("Number of patrons: " + str(numPatrons))
# Check for no valid inputs to avoid division by zero
if numPatrons > 0:
  averageStars = float(totalStars / numPatrons)
else:
  averageStars = 0
print("Average Star Value: " + str(averageStars))

answered Oct 27, 2019 at 3:17

Aaron Cyrman

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Comments

hunzter · Accepted Answer · 2019-10-27 03:06:37Z

0

You only add to totalStares with this condition:

 if numStars >= 0 and numStars <=4:
    totalStars += numStars

So it stopped after 4

answered Oct 27, 2019 at 3:06

hunzter

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