Cast Vote - codepath/compsci_guides GitHub Wiki

Unit 2 Session 2 (Click for link to problem statements)

U-nderstand

Understand what the interviewer is asking for by using test cases and questions about the problem.

P-lan

Plan the solution with appropriate visualizations and pseudocode.

General Idea: Check if the candidate is already in the dictionary, add them if not, then increment their votes by 1.

1) If the candidate is a key in the dict, increment the value by 1
2) Otherwise, map candidate -> 1 in the dict

I-mplement

def cast_vote(votes, candidate):
    if candidate in votes:
        votes[candidate] += 1
    else:
        votes[candidate] = 1
    return votes

Alternative Solution

def cast_vote(votes, candidate):
    if candidate not in votes:
        votes[candidate] = 0
    votes[candidate] += 1
    return votes