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A Look Into The Future Of Wireless Brain-Computer Interfaces.
How To Do Python Keyword Arguments Like An Expert
It is a little daunting for people who are new to python or
transitioning to python from other languages to understand how keyword
arguments work when compared to positional arguments. I will succinctly explain
each of them here and show you how to use keyword arguments like a pro in no
time.
There are two types of arguments that could be passed to python functions. They are positional arguments and keyword arguments.
Positional arguments are arguments that need to be included
by the caller in their proper position or order in the function definition. Let’s
take the complex() built-in function as an example. The syntax is complex([real[,
imag]])
where the first argument is the real number and the second is the
imaginary number. In complex numbers, the position is very important. A complex
number with real 2 and imaginary number 3 is written as 2 + 3j. If the order is
mistaken, then you have a different complex number. You need to note this when
using the complex function. For example take this code sample below:
You can see from running the code that I interchanged the 2 and 3 just to show you how positional arguments work. When you change the position of the arguments, you get a different result. You must give the function the same number of arguments as is defined in the positional arguments, else it will return an error.
But there are times when you want to pass a sequence of arguments, such as an iterable to the function, then you can use the * operator to do this. Notice that I used this * operator in line 6 in the code below. This unpacks the iterable and passes each of the items in the iterable to the function in order.
What are keyword arguments?
Keyword arguments, as the name denotes, are arguments that
are passed with a key=value
syntax. That is a key first, an = sign, and then a
value. Unlike positional arguments, the position of parameters or the order does not matter.
You can state the arguments in any order you
like. What matters are the names of the keys. In fact, when you pass a keyword
argument, python creates a dictionary of key=value
pairs for the arguments and
inserts it into the function appropriately.
Let’s take an example using our complex function again.
You can see from line 1 and 3 that I interchanged the positions of the arguments while specifying their key=value pairs and it gave me the same object.
Keyword arguments can seem odd as we go on to take more complex examples, but I want you to know that as you practice with it, it would become more natural and you would love using them. They have advantages.
In python documentation, the phrase "keyword argument" is often shortened to kwargs. So when you see such shorthand know that it signifies keyword arguments.
What are the advantages of using keyword arguments.
- With keyword arguments, we can leave off some of the arguments and the default is used for those that are left off.
- If we want to achieve readability in passing arguments, we can rearrange the arguments to make them readable.
- Objects that are being passed to the function are clear to use when we are passing them.
Notice that in line 4 first_name was not given to the function and I asked it to use the default. In line 5, I did not pass any argument at all, instead it just used the default.
The ability to rearrange the arguments at your willing makes you creative and provides code you can understand in the future.
Since we are using their names to pass them, we understand what we are doing in case we need to debug or read the code in the future. Consider these two lines for passing arguments to the complex function, which do you think is more readable?
Line 1 and line 3 creates the same object, but you must agree with me that line 3 is more readable because looking at the keys you can easily know what object you are passing to the function.
Now that we have a basic idea of keyword arguments and how they are used in python, let us illustrate some more features of keyword arguments with more examples.
Keyword arguments and examples
One example of a built-in function that requires a keyword argument in python is the sorted function. After the first iterable, every other argument that is passed to the function must be a keyword argument. In the code below, I tried reversing the sort order without passing a keyword argument of reverse=True and it returned a TypeError.
There is a handy technique that comes in handy when you want
to require that all your keyword arguments be named while having the ability to
pass on arbitrary positional arguments. That is mixing positional and keyword
arguments at the same time. When the positional arguments are more than one,
you can use the *parameter
statement (where parameter is a variable, value or object) to specify this.
Remember, as I said
before, when stating a keyword argument with a positional argument, the moment
you insert a keyword argument in the parameter list, any other argument that
comes next must be a keyword argument.
Let’s take this summing function as an illustrative example. It sums all the numbers passed starting from 1 as default. Notice that I did not pass the parameter, initial, as argument, because I wanted to use it as default. You can experiment with it. What if you want to make the initial starting point 2 or 3? What sum would it return?
Also, to take our knowledge one step further, what if you don’t
want to specify any positional arguments but you want an arbitrary number of
keyword arguments. You use the statement **kwargs
. You must have seen this
often in the python documentation. What python does when it sees this in the
function definition is to create a dictionary with the key=value of the passed
in parameters. Let’s illustrate this with an example.
When using the **kwargs
statement, order matters to the
python interpreter. It will evaluate all the keys according to the order that
they were passed.
I encourage you to use keyword arguments often. They give beauty to your programs. If you are not familiar with them, when writing any function ask yourself: can I use keyword arguments for this and make it more readable? It would solve you a whole lot of headache in the future.
The Next Big Thing About the Cerebellum Might Open Frontiers In Understanding The Brain
The cerebellum as earlier said was thought to be smaller because it is arranged in hundreds of folds which make it look small in surface area but researchers using ultra-high-field MRI imaging together with specialized software have found that the surface of the cerebellum is much larger than was believed. It was even found to be even bigger than the cerebral cortex. It is now said to be approximately more than 80 percent of the cerebral cortex.
This research would now open the way for more research into the benefits of the cerebellum for human behavior and cognition. This is because since the cerebellum is bigger than the cortex, it shows that human evolution is more advanced than other vertebrates, even those closer to man like the macaque monkeys. Therefore, it will help us to understand how over the years man has adapted better than other vertebrates to the environment and has used the advantage afforded it by a bigger cerebellum to develop advanced levels of cognitive abilities.
The researchers also found that while the cerebral cortex was well arranged and the body parts they were controlling well defined, that is not the case for the cerebellum. The cerebellum receives information from disparate parts of the body in a random manner. That means, areas for coordinating the shoulder could lie side by side with areas coordinating the foot. This gives humans the advantage over other animals of coordinating different body parts all at the same time from one central location, enhancing efficiency.
Also, the researchers found that the cerebellum must have a
higher role in controlling emotional responses more than was earlier thought.
It is established that the cerebellum is involved in movement-related
functions, but this study also delved into the study of damaged cerebellums and
found that people with such challenges had problems understanding their
emotions. But further research has to be done in this area.
In the coming years, with the results from the MRI study, researchers will be able to better understand how the brain works and not confine their knowledge to thinking the control of body functions is limited to specific areas of the brain. Mapping the cerebellum will be an interesting new frontier for scientific advancement and further understanding of the human body.