INFORMATICS PRACTICES

Textbook for Class XI

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 ISBN 978-93-5292-148-5

First Edition ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

August 2019 Shravana 1941  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a
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 Foreword
Information Technology has continuously been crossing the barriers
of access and communication and reaching more and more people.
The number of internet users in India has been on the rise. The
tremendous growth in computer science, telecommunications
and information technology has resulted in automation of various
tasks and contributed to the ease of living. Technology has made
continuous inroads into diverse areas — be it business, commerce,
science, sports, health, transportation or education. Today, we are
living in an interconnected world where computer based applications
influence the way we learn, communicate, commute, or even socialise.
With so many users of information and communication
technology (ICT), huge volumes of data are continuously generated
at an unprecedented rate. Many innovative business models are
being evolved which utilise such data to reach potential customers
in a more targeted way. Government agencies are also using data
to deliver services and fast track progress of different programmes,
strengthen accountability and to make more informed decisions.
This has been creating better opportunities for our youth not only to
enter the field of technical education but also in the world of work.
NCERT, for the first time, has developed a textbook on ‘Informative
Practices’ to develop skill sets in students to make use of the
opportunities provided by ICT.
This book focuses on the fundamental concepts related to
handling of data while opening a window to the emerging areas of
data processing. It seeks to address the dual challenges of reducing
curricular load as well as introducing the latest development in the
field of ICT.
As an organisation committed to systemic reforms and continuous
improvement in the quality of its curricular material, NCERT
welcomes comments and suggestions to enable us to bring about
necessary changes in its further publications.

Hrushikesh Senapaty
Director
New Delhi National Council of Educational
July 2019 Research and Training

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 Preface
In the present education system of our country, specialised/discipline
based courses are introduced at the higher secondary stage. This stage
is crucial as well as challenging because of the transition from general
to discipline-based curriculum. The syllabus at this stage needs to have
sufficient rigour and depth while remaining mindful of the comprehension
level of the learners. Further, the textbook should not be heavily loaded
with content.
We are living in an era where information drives many of our
socio-economic decisions. Millions of people are accessing internet round
the clock for availing various services and thereby generating vast amount
of data. Processing of data is becoming a key skill with applications
across the disciplines. Thus, study of basic concepts of data handling
and analysis is becoming more and more desirable. There are courses
offered in the name of computer science, Information and Communication
Technology (ICT), Information Technology (IT), etc. by various boards and
schools up to the secondary stage, as an optional subject. These mainly
focus on using computer for word processing, presentation tools and
application software.
Informatics Practices (IP) at the higher secondary stage of school
education is also offered as an optional subject. At this stage, students
can take up IP with the aim of pursuing a career in data science or related
areas after going through professional courses at higher levels. Therefore,
at the higher secondary stage, the curriculum of IP introduces the basics
of database management systems and data processing. The book has eight
chapters covering the following broader themes:
• Basic understanding of computer systems and their evolution,
introduction to software and their categorisation, computer
memory, awareness of emerging trends in the field of information
and communication technology.
• Basic constructs of a program using Python programming
language — program structure, identifiers, variables, flow of control,
advanced data types like Lists and Dictionaries.
• Handling data using specialised Python library called NumPy — concept
of single and multi-dimensional Array.
• Concepts of data, database, and relational database management
system using MySQL. Structured query language — data definition,
data manipulation and data querying.
Python programming language and NumPy are introduced using both
the interactive and script mode. A number of hands-on examples are given
in Python, NumPy and MySQL to gradually explain the methodology to
solve different types of problems and handle data. The programming and
database related examples as well as the exercises in those chapters are
required to be solved in a computer and verified with the given outputs.

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 vi

The chapters in this book have two additional components — activities

for self assessment and ‘think and reflect’ to generate further interest in
the learner.
Group projects through case studies are proposed to solve complex
problems. Some exercises have been made in case-study form to promote
problem-finding and problem-solving skills.
These chapters have been written by involving practicing teachers as
well as subject experts. These have been iteratively peer-reviewed. Several
iterations have resulted into this book. Thanks to the authors and reviewers
for their valuable contribution.
Comments and suggestions are welcome to make this endeavour par
excellence.

 Dr. Rejaul Karim Barbhuiya

 Assistant Professor,
 Department of Education in
 Science and Mathematics, NCERT

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 Textbook Development Committee

Members
Anuradha Khattar, Assistant Professor, Miranda House, University of
Delhi, Delhi
Chetna Khanna, Freelance Educationist, Delhi
Gurpreet Kaur, PGT (Computer Science), GD Goenka Public School, Delhi
Harita Ahuja, Assistant Professor, Acharya Narendra Dev College,
University of Delhi, Delhi
Mudasir Wani, Assistant Professor, Govt. Degree College for Women,
Srinagar, Jammu and Kashmir
Om Vikas, Professor (Retd.), Formerly Director, ABV-IIITM, Gwalior,
Madhya Pradesh
Priti Rai Jain, Assistant Professor, Miranda House, University of Delhi,
Delhi
Rinku Kumari, PGT (Computer Science), Kendriya Vidyalaya, Sainik Vihar,
Delhi
Sharanjit Kaur, Associate Professor, Acharya Narendra Dev College,
University of Delhi, Delhi
Tapasi Ray, Formerly Global IT Director, Huntsman Corporation, Singapore

Member-Coordinator
Rejaul Karim Barbhuiya, Assistant Professor, DESM, NCERT, Delhi

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 Acknowledgements

The National Council of Educational Research and Training acknowledges

the valuable contributions of the individuals and organisation involved in
the development of Informatics Practices textbook for Class XI.
The council expresses its gratitude to the syllabus development team
including MPS Bhatia, Professor, Netaji Subhas Institute of Technology,
Delhi; T V Vijay Kumar, Professor, School of Computer and Systems
Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi; Zahid Raza, Associate
Professor, School of Computer and Systems Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru
University, New Delhi; Vipul Shah, Principal Scientist, Tata Consultancy
Services, and the CSpathshala team; Smruti Ranjan Sarangi, Associate
Professor, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Indian
Institute of Technology Delhi; Vikram Goyal, Associate Professor,
Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology (IIIT) Delhi; Vandana
Tyagi, PGT (Computer Science), Kendriya Vidyalaya, JNU, Delhi and Mamur
Ali, Assistant Professor, Central Institute of Educational Technology,
NCERT, New Delhi.
The council is thankful to the following resource persons for their
contribution in editing, reviewing, and refining the manuscript of this book:
D.N. Sansanwal, Retd. Professor, Devi Ahilya Vishwavidyalaya, Indore;
Veer Saini Dixit, Assistant Professor, Atma Ram Sanatan Dharma College,
University of Delhi, Delhi; Mukesh Kumar, Teacher, DPS RK Puram, Delhi;
Gautam Sarkar, Teacher, Modern School, Barakhamba Road, Delhi; Aswin
K. Dash, Teacher, Mother’s International School, Delhi; Nancy Sehgal,
Teacher, Mata Jai Kaur Public School, Delhi; Neelima Gupta, Professor,
Department of Computer Science, University of Delhi; Anamika Gupta,
Assistant Professor, Shaheed Sukhdev College of Business Studies,
University of Delhi. The council further acknowledges the contribution of
Anuja Krishn, freelance editor, for refining the chapters from language
point of view.
The council in greatful to Dinesh Kumar, Professor and Head, DESM
for his valuable cooperation and support throughout the development
of this book.
The council also gratefully acknowledges the contributions of Meetu
Sharma, Graphic Designer; Kanika Walecha, DTP Operator; Pooja, Junior
Project Fellow; Hari Darshan Lodhi and Junaid Ahmed, DTP Operator
(Contractual); Chanchal Chauhan, Proofreader (Contractual) and
Aishwarya Bhattacharyya, Assistant Editor (Contractual), in shaping
this book. The contributions of the office of the APC, DESM and
Publication Division, NCERT, New Delhi, in bringing out this book are
also duly acknowledged.

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 Contents
Foreword iii
Preface iv
Chapter 1 Computer System 1
1.1 Introduction to Computer System 1
1.2 Evolution of Computer 3
1.3 Computer Memory 5
1.4 Software 9
Chapter 2 Emerging Trends 15
2.1 Introduction to Emerging Trends 15
2.2 Artificial Intelligence (AI) 16
2.3 Big Data 19
2.4 Internet of Things (IoT) 21
2.5 Cloud Computing 23
2.6 Grid Computing 25
2.7 Blockchains 26
Chapter 3 Brief Overview of Python 31
3.1 Introduction to Python 31
3.2 Python Keywords 34
3.3 Identifiers 34
3.4 Variables 34
3.5 Data Types 35
3.6 Operators 38
3.7 Expressions 41
3.8 Input and Output 42
3.9 Debugging 43
3.10 Functions 44
3.11 if..else Statements 46
3.12 for Loop 48
3.13 Nested Loops 50
Chapter 4 Working with Lists and Dictionaries 55
4.1 Introduction to List 55
4.2 List Operations 57
4.3 Traversing a List 59
4.4 List Methods and Built-in Functions 60

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 x

4.5 List Manipulation 62

4.6 Introduction to Dictionaries 67
4.7 Traversing a Dictionary 69
4.8 Dictionary Methods and Built-in Functions 69
4.9 Manipulating Dictionaries 71

Chapter 5 Understanding Data 81

5.1 Introduction to Data 81
5.2 Data Collection 85
5.3 Data Storage 86
5.4 Data Processing 87
5.5 Statistical Techniques for Data Processing 88

Chapter 6 Introduction to NumPy 95

6.1 Introduction 95
6.2 Array 96
6.3 NumPy Array 96
6.4 Indexing and Slicing 100
6.5 Operations on Arrays 102
6.6 Concatenating Arrays 104
6.7 Reshaping Arrays 105
6.8 Splitting Arrays 106
6.9 Statistical Operations on Arrays 107
6.10 Loading Arrays from Files 109
6.11 Saving NumPy Arrays in Files on Disk 112

Chapter 7 Database Concepts 123

7.1 Introduction 123
7.2 File System 124
7.3 Database Management System 127
7.4 Relational Data Model 132
7.5 Keys in a Relational Database 136

Chapter 8 Introduction to Structured Query Language (SQL) 143

8.1 Introduction 143
8.2 Structured Query Language (SQL) 144
8.3 Data Types and Constraints in MySQL 145
8.4 SQL for Data Definition 146
8.5 SQL for Data Manipulation 153
8.6 SQL for Data Query 156
8.7 Data Updation and Deletion 166

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 aglasem.com

Computer Chapter

System 1

In this chapter

»» Introduction to
Computer System
»» Evolution of Computer
“A computer would deserve to be called
»» Computer Memory
intelligent if it could deceive a human into
»» Software
believing that it was human.”

— Alan Turing

1.1 Introduction to Computer System

A computer is an electronic device that can be
programmed to accept data (input), process it and
generate result (output). A computer along with
additional hardware and software together is called a
computer system.
A computer system primarily comprises of a central
processing unit, memory, input/output devices, and
storage devices. All these components function together
as a single unit to deliver the desired output. A computer
system comes in various forms and sizes. It can vary

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2 Informatics Practices – Class XI

Secondary from a high-end server to a personal

Storage Devices desktop, laptop, tablet computer, or
smartphone.
Primary Figure 1.1 shows the block diagram
Memory
of a computer system. The directed
Input Control Unit Output lines represent the flow of data and
Device (CU) Device signal between the components.

Arithmetic Logic 1.1.1 Central Processing Unit (CPU)

Unit (ALU)
It is the electronic circuitry of a
Central Processing computer that carries out the actual
Unit (CPU)
processing and is usually referred to
Figure 1.1: Components of a Computer System
as the brain of the computer. It is also
commonly called 'processor' also. Physically, a CPU can
be placed on one or more microchips called integrated
circuits (IC). The ICs comprise semiconductor materials.
The CPU is given instructions and data through
programs. The CPU then fetches the program and data
from the memory and performs arithmetic and logical
operations as per the given instructions and stores the
result back to memory.
While processing, the CPU stores the data as well
as instructions in its local memory, 'called' registers.
Registers are part of the CPU chip and they are limited
in size and number. Different registers are used for
storing data, instructions or intermediate results.
Other than the registers, the CPU has two main
components — Arithmetic Logic Unit (ALU) and Control
Unit (CU). ALU performs all the arithmetic and logic
operations that need to be done as per the instruction in a
Keyboard program. CU controls sequential instruction execution,
interprets instructions and guides data flow through the
computer’s memory, ALU and input or output devices.
CPU is also popularly known as microprocessor.
Mouse
1.1.2 Input Devices
The devices through which control signals are sent
to a computer are termed as input devices. These
Scanner devices convert the input data into a digital form that is
acceptable by the computer system. Some examples of
input devices include keyboard, mouse, scanner, touch
screen, etc., as shown in Figure 1.2. Specially designed
Touch Screen braille keyboards are also available to help the visually
impaired for entering data into a computer. Besides, we
Figure 1.2: Input Devices can now enter data through voice, for example, we can

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Computer System 3

use Google voice search to search the web where we can

input the search string through our voice.
Data entered through input device is temporarily
stored in the main memory (also called RAM) of the
Display monitor
computer system. For permanent storage and future use,
the data as well as instructions are stored permanently
in additional storage locations called secondary memory.
1.1.3 Output Devices Speaker

The device that receives data from a computer system

for display, physical production, etc., is called output
device. It converts digital information into human-
understandable form. For example, monitor, projector, Printer
headphone, speaker, printer, etc. Some output devices
are shown in Figure 1.3. A braille display monitor is
useful for a visually challenged person to understand
the textual output generated by computers. 3D printer
A printer is the most commonly used device to get
output in physical (hardcopy) form. Three types of Figure 1.3: Output Devices
commonly used printers are inkjet, laserjet and dot
matrix. Now-a-days, there is a new type of printer
called 3D-printer, which is used to build physical
replica of a digital 3D design. These printers are being
used in manufacturing industries to create prototypes
of products. Their usage is also being explored in the
medical field, particularly for developing body organs.

1.2 Evolution of Computer

From the simple calculator to a modern day powerful
data processor, computing devices have evolved in a
relatively short span of time. The evolution of computing
devices is shown through a timeline at Figure 1.5.
The Von Neumann architecture is shown in Figure
1.4. It consists of a Central Processing Unit (CPU)
for processing arithmetic and logical instructions, a
memory to store data and programs, input and output
devices and communication channels to send/receive
the output data. Electronic Numerical Integrator And
Computer (ENIAC) is the first
binary programmable computer
based on Von Neumann
architecture.
During the 1970s, Large Scale
Integration (LSI) of electronic Figure 1.4: Von Neumann Architecture for the
circuits allowed integration of Computer

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4 Informatics Practices – Class XI

EDVAC/ENIAC
Pascaline John Von Neumann introduced
Blaize Pascal invented a the concept of stored program
mechanical calculator known computer which was capable of
as Pascal calculator or storing data as well as program
Pascaline to do addition and in the memory. The EDVAC and
subtraction of two numbers then the ENIAC computers were
directly and multiplication and developed based on this concept.
division through repeated
addition or subtraction.
Tabulating Machine Integrated Circuit
Herman Hollerith designed An Integrated Circuit (IC) is
a tabulating machine for a silicon chip which contains
1642 summarising the data stored 1945 entire electronic circuit on a
on the punched card. It is very small area. The size of
considered to be the first computer has drastically
step towards programming. reduced because of ICs.

1890 1970

1834 1947

Analytical Engine Transistor

Charles Babbage invented Vaccum tubes were
analytical engine, a replaced by transistors
1937 developed at Bell Labs,
500 BC mechanical computing device
for inputting, processing, using semiconductor
storing and displaying the materials.
output, which is considered
to form the basis of modern
computers.

Abacus Turing Machine

Computing is attributed to The Turing machine concept was a
the invention of ABACUS general purpose programmable
almost 3000 years ago. It machine that was capable to solve
was a mechanical device any problem by executing the
capable of doing simple program stored on the punched
arithmetic calculations only. cards.

Figure 1.5: Timeline Showing Key Inventions in Computing Technology

complete CPU on a single chip, called microprocessor.

Moore’s Law predicted exponential growth in number
of transistors that could be assembled in a single
microchip. In 1980s, the processing power of computers
increased exponentially by integrating around 3 million
components on a small-sized chip termed as Very
A punched card is a Large Scale Integration (VLSI). Further advancement in
piece of stiff paper that technology has made it feasible to fabricate high density
stores digital data in
the form of holes at
of transistors and other components (approx 106
predefined positions. components) on a single IC called Super Large Scale
Integration (SLSI) as shown in Figure 1.6.
IBM introduced its first personal computer (PC) for
the home user in 1981, Apple introduced Macintosh
machines in 1984. The popularity of the PC surged
by the introduction of Graphical User Interface (GUI)

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Computer System 5

10,000,000,000
Number of Transistors
per Integrated Circuit
1,000,000,000 Core 2 DUO Core i7
100,000,000 Intel Microprocessors Pentium IV
Pentium II Pentium III
10,000,000 Pentium
1,000,000 486
486
100,000 Invention of the 386
Transistor 286
10,000 8086
1,000 4004
100 Doubles every 2 years
10
1
1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 2020

Figure 1.6: Exponential Increase in Number of Transistors used in ICs Over Time
based operating systems by Microsoft and others in
place of computers with only command line interface,
like UNIX or DOS. Around 1990s, the growth of world
wide web (WWW) further accelerated mass usage of
computers and thereafter computers have become an
indispensable part of everyday life.
Further, with the introduction of laptops, personal
computing was made portable to a great extent. This In 1965, Intel co-
was followed by smartphones, tablets and other founder Gordon Moore
personal digital assistants. These devices have introduced Moore’s
Law which predicted
leveraged the technological advancements in processor
that the number of
miniaturisation, faster memory, high speed data and transistors on a chip
connectivity mechanisms. would double every two
The next wave of computing devices includes years while the costs
wearable gadgets such as smart watch, lenses, would be halved.
headbands, headphones, etc. Further, smart appliances
are becoming a part of the Internet of Things (IoT), by
leveraging the power of artificial intelligence.

1.3 Computer Memory

A computer system needs memory to store the data and
instructions for processing. Whenever we talk about
the “memory” of a computer system, we usually talk
about the main or primary memory. The secondary
memory (also called storage device) is used to store
data, instructions and results permanently and for Think and Reflect
future use. How do different
components of a
1.3.1 Units of Memory computer communicate
A computer system uses binary numbers to store and with each other?
process data. The binary digits 0 and 1, which are the

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6 Informatics Practices – Class XI

basic units of memory, are called bits. Further, these

bits are grouped together to form words. A 4-bit word
is called a Nibble. Examples of nibble are 1001, 1010,
0010, etc. A two nibble word, i.e., 8-bit word is called a
byte, for example, 01000110, 01111100, 10000001, etc.
Like any other standard unit, bytes are grouped
Table 1.1 Measurement units for digital data together to make
Unit Description Unit Description
bigger chunks or units
of memory. Table
KB (Kilobyte) 1 KB = 1024 Bytes PB (Petabyte) 1 PB = 1024 TB
1.1 shows different
MB (Megabyte) 1 MB = 1024 KB EB (Exabyte) 1 EB = 1024 PB measurement units for
GB (Gigabyte) 1 GB = 1024 MB ZB (Zettabyte) 1 ZB = 1024 EB digital data stored in
TB (Terabyte) 1 TB = 1024 GB YB (Yottabyte) 1 YB = 1024 ZB computer memories.

1.3.2 Types of Memory

Human beings memorise many things over a lifetime,
and recall from memory to make a decision or take
some action. However, we cannot rely on our memory
completely, so we make notes and store important
data and information using other mediums such as
notebook, manual, journal, document etc. for a long-
term storage. Similarly, computers have two types of
memories namely —primary memory and secondary
memory.
(A) Primary Memory
The primary memory is an essential component of a
computer system. Program and data are loaded into the
primary memory before processing. The CPU interacts
directly with the primary memory to perform read/
write operation. It is of two types viz. i) Random access
memory (RAM), and ii) Read only memory (ROM).
RAM is volatile i.e. as long as the power is supplied to
the computer, it retains the data in it. But as soon as the
power supply is turned off, all the contents of RAM are
Think and Reflect wiped out. It is used to store data temporarily while the
Suppose there is a computer is working. Whenever the computer is started
computer with RAM
but no secondary or a software application is launched, the required
storage. Can we install program and data are loaded into RAM for processing.
a software on that RAM is usually referred to as main memory and it is
computer? faster than the secondary memory or storage devices.
On the other hand, ROM is non-volatile, means its
contents are not lost even when the power is turned off.
It is used as a small but faster permanent storage for
the contents which are rarely changed. For example, the

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Computer System 7

startup program (boot loader) that loads the operating

system into RAM is stored in a ROM.
(B) Cache Memory
RAM is faster than secondary storage, but not as fast as
a computer processor. So, because of RAM, a CPU may Pen
have to slow down. To speed up the operations of the Drive
CPU, a very high speed memory is placed between the
CPU and the primary memory known as cache. It stores
the copies of the data from frequently accessed primary
memory locations, thus, reducing the average time
required to access data from primary memory. When
the CPU needs to access memory, it first examines the
cache. In case the requirement is met, it is read from
the cache, otherwise the primary memory is accessed.
(C) Secondary Memory
Primary memory has limited storage capacity and
is either volatile (RAM) or read-only (ROM). Thus, a
computer system needs auxiliary or secondary memory
to permanently store the data or instructions for
future use. The secondary memory is non-volatile and
has larger storage capacity than primary memory. It
is slower and cheaper than the main memory. But, it
cannot be accessed directly by the CPU. Contents of
secondary storage need to be first brought into the main Figure 1.7: Storage Devices
memory for the CPU to access. Examples of secondary
memory devices include Hard Disk Drive (HDD), CD/
DVD, Memory Card, etc., as shown in Figure 1.7.
However, these days, there are secondary storage
devices like Solid-State Drive (SSD) which support very
fast data transfer speed as compared to earlier HDDs.
Also, data transfer between computers have become
easier and simpler due to the availability of small sized
and portable flash/pen drives.
1.3.3 Data Capturing, Storage, and Retrieval
To process the data, we need to first input or capture
the data. This is followed by its storage in a file or a
database so that it can be used in the future. Whenever
data is to be processed, it is first retrieved from the file/
database so that we can perform further actions on it.
Activity 1.1
(A) Data Capturing List all secondary
It involves the process of gathering data from different storage devices available
sources in digital form. Data may be coptured using, in your school or home.
keyboard bar code readers (Used at shopping outlets as

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8 Informatics Practices – Class XI

shown in Fig. 1.8 (Figure 1.8)), remore sensors on earth

orbiting satellites etc. comments/ports over multiple
social media are also captured as data. Sometimes,
heterogeneity among data sources makes data capturing
a complex task.
Figure 1.8: Capturing Data (B) Data Storage
using Barcode Reader It is the process of storing the captured data for
processing later. Now-a-days data is being produced at
a very high rate, and therefore data storage has become
a challenging task. However, the decrease in the cost
of digital storage devices has helped in simplifying
this task. There are numerous digital storage devices
available in the market as shown in Figure 1.7.
Data keeps on increasing with time. Hence, the
storage devices also require to be upgraded periodically.
Activity 1.2 In large organisations, computers with larger and
faster storage called data servers are deployed to store
Visit some of the places
like bank, automobile vast amount of data. Such dedicated computers help
showroom, shopping in processing data efficiently. However, the cost (both
mall, tehsil office, etc., hardware and software) of setting up a data server as
and find out 2–3 names well as its maintenance is high, especially for small
of tools/instruments
used to capture data in organisations and startups.
digital format. (C) Data Retrieval
It involves fetching data from the storage devices, for its
processing as per the user requirement. As databases
grow, the challenges involved in search and retrieval of
the data in acceptable time, also increase. Minimising
data access time is crucial for faster data processing.
1.3.4 Data Deletion and Recovery
One of the biggest threats associated with digital data is
its deletion. The storage devices can malfunction or crash
down resulting in the deletion of the stored data. Users
can accidentally erase data from storage devices, or a
hacker/malware can delete the digital data intentionally.
Deleting digitally stored data means changing the
details of data at bit level, which can be very time-
consuming. Therefore, when any data is simply deleted,
Activity 1.3 its address entry is marked as free, and that much
Explore possible ways space is shown as empty to the user, without actually
of recovering deleted deleting the data.
data or data from a
In case data gets deleted accidentally or corrupted,
corrupted device.
there arises a need to recover the data. Recovery of the
data is possible only if the contents/memory space

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Computer System 9

marked as deleted have not been overwritten by some

other data. Data recovery is a process of retrieving
deleted, corrupted and lost data from secondary
storage devices.
There are usually two security concerns associated
with data. One is its deletion by some unauthorised
person or software. These concerns can be avoided
by limiting access to the computer system and using
passwords for user accounts and files, wherever
possible. There is also an option of encrypting files to
protect them from unwanted modification.
The other concern is related to unwanted recovery
of data by unauthorised user/software. Many a times,
we discard our old, broken or malfunctioning storage Activity 1.4
devices without taking care to delete data. We assume
Create a test file and
that the contents of deleted files are permanently then delete it using
removed. However, if these storage devices fall into the Shift+Delete from
hands of mischief-mongers, they can easily recover the keyboard. Now
data from such devices; this poses a threat to data recover the file using
confidentiality. This concern can be mitigated by using the methods you have
explored at Activity 1.3.
proper tools to delete or shred data before disposing off
any old or faulty storage device.

1.4 Software
Till now, we have studied about the physical
components or the hardware of the computer system.
But the hardware is of no use on its own. Hardware
needs to be operated by a set of instructions. These
sets of instructions are referred to as software. It is that
component of a computer system, which we cannot
touch or view physically. It comprises of the instructions
and data to be processed using the computer hardware.
The computer software and hardware complete any
task together. Hardware refers to the
The software comprises of set of instructions which physical components
on execution deliver the desired outcome. In other of the computer system
which can be seen and
words, each software is written for some computational touched. For example,
purpose. Some examples of software include operating RAM, keyboard,
systems like Ubuntu or Windows 7/10, word processing printer, monitor, CPU
tools like LibreOffice Writer or Microsoft Word, video etc. On the other hand,
player like VLC Player, photo editors like Paint and software is a set of
instructions and data
LibreOffice Draw. A document or image stored on the that makes hardware
hard disk or pen drive is referred to as a softcopy. Once functional to complete
printed, the document or an image is called a hardcopy. the desired task.

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10 Informatics Practices – Class XI

1.4.1 Need of Software

The sole purpose of a software is to make computer
hardware useful and operational. A software knows
how to make different hardware components of a
computer work and communicate with each other as
well as with the end user. We cannot talk to or instruct
the hardware of a computer directly. Hence, software
acts as an interface between human users and
the hardware.
Depending on the mode of interaction with hardware
and functions to be performed, software can be broadly
classified into three categories viz. i) System software
ii) Programming tools and iii) Application software. The
categorisation of software is shown in Figure 1.9.
1.4.2 System Software
The software that provides the basic functionality
to operate a computer by interacting directly with its
constituent hardware is termed as system software. A
system software knows how to operate and use different
hardware components of a computer. It provides services
directly to the end user, or to some other software.
Examples of system software include operating systems,
system utilities, device drivers, etc.
(A) Operating System
As the name implies, operating system is a system
software that operates the computer. An operating
system is the most basic system software, without
which other software cannot work. The operating system
manages other application programs and provides
access and security to the users of the system. Some
of the popular operating systems are Windows, Linux,
Macintosh, Ubuntu, Fedora, Android, iOS, etc.
(B) System Utilities
Software used for maintenance and configuration of the
computer system is called system utility. Some system
utilities are shipped with the operating system, for
example disk defragmentation tool, formatting utility,
system restore utility, etc. Another set of utilities are
those which are not shipped with the operating system
but are required to improve the performance of the
system, for example, anti-virus software, disk cleaner
tool, disk compression software, etc.

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Computer System 11

(C) Device Drivers

As the name signifies, the purpose
of a device driver is to ensure
proper functioning of a particular
device. When it comes to the overall
working of a computer system, the
operating system does the work.
But everyday new devices and
components are being added to a
computer system. It is not possible
for operating system alone to
manage all of the existing and new
peripherals, where each device
has diverse characteristics. The
responsibility for overall control,
Figure 1.9: Categorisation of Software
operation, and management of a
particular device at the hardware level is delegated to
its device driver.
The device driver acts as an interface between the
device and the operating system. It provides required
services by hiding the details of operations performed
at the hardware level of the device. Just like a language Activity 1.5
translator, a device driver acts as a mediator between Ask your teacher to
the operating system and the attached device. help you locate any two
device drivers installed
1.4.3 Application Software on your computer.
The system software provides the core functionality of
the computer system. However, different users need the
computer system for different purposes depending upon
their requirements. Hence, a new category of software
is needed to cater to different requirements of the end- A computer system
users. This specific software that works on top of the can work without
system software is termed as application software. There application software,
but it cannot work
are again two broad categories of application software:
without system
general purpose and customised application software. software. For example,
we can use a computer
(A) General Purpose Software even if no word
The application software developed for generic processing software
applications, to cater to a bigger audience in general is installed, but if no
are called general purpose software. Such ready-made operating system is
installed, we can not
application software can be used by end users as per
work on the computer.
their requirements. For example, spreadsheet tool In other words, the use
LibreOffice Calc can be used by any computer user to of computer is possible
do calculation or to create an account sheet. Adobe in the absence of
Photoshop, GIMP, Mozilla web browser, iTunes, etc. fall application software.
in the category of general purpose software.

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12 Informatics Practices – Class XI

(B) Customised Software

These are custom or tailor-made application software,
that are developed to meet the requirements of a specific
Activity 1.6
organisation or an individual. They are better suited to
With the help of your
the needs of an individual or an organisation, considering
teacher, install one
application software in that they are designed as per special requirements. Some
your computer. examples of user-defined software include websites,
school management software, accounting software, etc.
It is similar to buying a piece of cloth with specific color
and fabric and get it stitched as desired.
1.4.4 Proprietary or Free and Open Source Software
Developers of some software allow public to freely use
their software along with source code with an aim to
improve further with each other’s help. Such software is
known as Free and Open Source Software (FOSS). For
example, the source code of operating system Ubuntu is
freely accessible for anyone with the required knowledge
to improve/add new functionality. More examples of
FOSS include Python, Libreoffice, Openoffice, Mozilla
Firefox, etc. Sometimes, software are freely available
for use but source code may not be available. Such
software is called freeware. Examples of freeware are
Skype, Adobe Reader etc.
When software to be used has to be purchased from
the vendor who has the copyright of the software, then
it is a proprietary software. Examples of proprietary
software include Microsoft Windows, Tally, Quickheal
etc. A software can be freeware or open source or
proprietary software depending upon the terms and
conditions of the person or group who has developed
and released that software.

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Computer System 13

Summary Notes
• A computing device, also referred as computer
processes the input data as per given instructions
to generate desired output.
• Computer processes data to generate information
whose further analysis and interpretation yields
knowledge.
• Computer system has four physical components
viz. i) CPU ii) Primary memory iii) Input device and
iv) Output device. They are referred to as hardware
of computer.
• Computer system has two types of primary
memories viz. i) RAM the volatile memory and ii)
ROM the non-volatile memory.
• Software is a set of instructions written to achieve
the desired task and are mainly categorised as
system software, programming tools and application
software.
• Hardware of a computer cannot function on its own.
It needs software to be operational or functional.
• Operating system is an interface between the user
and the computer and supervises the working of
computer system i.e. it monitors and controls the
hardware and software of the computer system.

Exercise
1. Name the software required to make a computer
functional. Write down its two primary functions.
2. What is the need of RAM? How does it differ from ROM?
3. What is the need for secondary memory?
4. Draw the block diagram of a computer system. Briefly
write about the functionality of each component.
5. Differentiate between proprietary software and freeware
software. Name two software of each type.
6. Mention any browsers used for browsing the internet.

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14 Informatics Practices – Class XI

Notes 7. Name the input/output device used to do the following:

a) To output audio
b) To enter textual data
c) To make hard copy of a text file
d) To display the data/information
e) To enter audio-based command
f) To build 3D models
g) To assist a visually impaired individual in entering
data
8. Identify the category (system, application, programming
tool) of the following software:
a) Compiler
b) Assembler
c) Ubuntu
d) Text editor
9. Convert the following into bytes:
a) 2 MB
b) 3.7 GB
c) 1.2 TB
10. What is the security threats involved when we throw
away electronic gadgets that are non-functional?
11. Write down the type of memory needed to do the following:
a) To store data permanently
b) To execute the program
c) To store the instructions which can not be overwritten.

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Emerging Chapter

Trends 2

In this chapter

» Introduction to
Emerging Trends
» Artificial Intelligence (AI)
“Computer science is no more about
» Big Data
computers than astronomy is about
» Internet of Things (IoT)
telescopes” » Cloud Computing
» Grid Computing
— Edsger Dijkstra » Blockchains

2.1 IntroductIon to EmErgIng trEnds

Computers have been around for quite some time
now. New technologies and initiatives emerge
with each passing day. In order to understand the
existing technologies and have a better view of the
developments around us, we must keep an eye on
the emerging trends. Many new technologies are
introduced almost every day. Some of these do not
succeed and fade away over time. Some of these
new technologies prosper and persist over time,
gaining attention from users. Emerging trends
are the state-of-the-art technologies, which gain

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16 InformatIcs PractIces – class XI

popularity and set a new trend among users. In this

chapter, we will learn about some emerging trends
that will make a huge impact (in the future) on digital
economy and interaction in digital societies.

2.2 ArtIfIcIAl IntEllIgEncE (AI)

Have you ever wondered how maps in your smartphone
are able to guide you to take the fastest route to your
destination by analysing real time data, such as traffic
congestion? On uploading a photo on a social networking
site, has it ever happened that your friends in the
photograph were recognised and tagged automatically?
These are some of the examples of application of
Artificial Intelligence. The intelligent digital personal
assistants like Siri, Google Now, Cortana, Alexa are
all powered by AI. Artificial Intelligence endeavours to
simulate the natural intelligence of human beings into
machines, thus making them behave intelligently. An
A knowledge base is
intelligent machine is supposed to imitate some of the
a store of information cognitive functions of humans like learning, decision-
consisting of facts, making and problem solving. In order to make machines
assumptions and perform tasks with minimum human intervention, they
rules which an AI are programmed to create a knowledge base and make
system can use for
decision making.
decisions based on it. AI system can also learn from
past experiences or outcomes to make new decisions.
2.2.1 Machine Learning
Machine Learning is a subsystem of Artificial
Intelligence, wherein computers have the ability to learn
from data using statistical techniques, without being
explicitly programmed by a human being. It comprises
algorithms that use data to learn on their own and make
predictions. These algorithms, called models, are first
trained and tested using a training data and testing
data, respectively. After successive trainings, once these
models are able to give results to an acceptable level of
accuracy, they are used to make predictions about new
and unknown data.
2.2.2 Natural Language Processing (NLP)

Activity 2.1
The predictive typing feature of search engine that
helps us by suggesting the next word in the sentence
Find out how NLP is
while typing keywords and the spell checking features
helping differently-
abled persons? are examples of Natural Language Processing (NLP).
It deals with the interaction between human and

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emergIng trends 17

computers using human

spoken languages, such as
Hindi, English, etc.
In fact it is possible to
search the web or operate or
control our devices using our
voice. All this has been possible
by NLP. An NLP system can
perform text-to-speech and Figure 2.1: Use of natural language processing
speech-to-text conversion as
depicted in Figure 2.1.
Machine translation is a rapidly emerging field where
machines are able to translate texts from one language
to another with fair amount of correctness. Another
emerging application area is automated customer
service where a computer software can interact with
customers to serve their queries or complaints.
2.2.3 Immersive Experiences
With the three-dimensional (3D) videography, the
joy of watching movies in theatres has reached to
a new level. Video games are also being developed to
provide immersive experiences to the player. Immersive
experiences allow us to visualise, feel and react by
stimulating our senses. It enhances our interaction and
involvement, making them more realistic and engaging.
Immersive experiences have been used in the field of
training, such as driving simulators (Figure 2.2), flight Figure 2.2: Driving Simulator
simulator and so on. Immersive experience can be
achieved using virtual reality and augmented reality.
(A) Virtual Reality
Everything that we experience in our reality is perceived
through our senses. From this came the idea that
if we can present our senses with made-up or non-
real information, our perception of reality would also
alter in response to that. Virtual Reality (VR) is a
three-dimensional, computer-generated situation that
simulates the real world. The user can interact with and
explore that environment by getting immersed in it while
interacting with the objects and other actions of the user.
At present, it is achieved with the help of VR Headsets.
In order to make the experience of VR more realistic, it
promotes other sensory information like sound, smell,
motion, temperature, etc. It is a comparatively new field Figure 2.3: VR Headset

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18 InformatIcs PractIces – class XI

and has found its applications in gaming (Figure 2.3),

Unlike Virtual Reality, military training, medical procedures, entertainment,
the Augmented Reality
does not create something
social science and psychology, engineering and
new, it just alters or other areas where simulation is needed for a better
augments the perception understanding and learning.
of the underlying physical
world through additional (B) Augmented Reality
information. The superimposition of computer generated perceptual
information over the existing physical surroundings is
called as Augmented Reality (AR). It adds components
of the digital world to the physical world, along with
the associated tactile and other sensory requirements,
thereby making the environment interactive and
digitally manipulable. Users can access information
about the nearest places with reference to their current
location. They can get information about places and
choose on the basis of user reviews. With thet help of
location-based AR App, travellers can access real-time
information of historical places just by pointing their
Figure 2.4: Location based camera viewfinder to subjects as depicted in Figure 2.4.
Augmented Reality Location-based AR apps are major forms of AR apps.
2.2.4 Robotics
A robot is basically a machine capable of carrying out one
or more tasks automatically with accuracy and precision.
Unlike other machines, a robot is programmable, which
means it can follow the instructions given through
Activity 2.2
computer programs. Robots were initially conceptualised
Find out what role are for doing repetitive industrial tasks that are boring or
robots playing in the stressful for humans or were labour-intensive. Sensors
medical field?
are one of the prime components of a robot. Robot can
be of many types, such as wheeled robots, legged robots,
manipulators and humanoids. Robots that resemble
humans are known as humanoids. Robots are being
used in industries, medical science, bionics, scientific
research, military, etc. Some examples are:
Robotics is an • NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover (MER) mission is
interdisciplinary branch a robotic space mission to study about the planet
of technology requiring Mars (Figure 2.5).
applications of mechanical
engineering, electronics, • Sophia is a humanoid that uses artificial intelligence,
and computer science, visual data processing, facial recognition and also
among others. Robotics is
imitates human gestures and facial expressions, as
primarily concerned with
the design, fabrication, shown in Figure 2.6.
operation, and application • A drone is an unmanned aircraft which can be
of robots.
remotely controlled or can fly autonomously through

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emergIng trends 19

Figure 2.5: NASA’s Mars Figure 2.6: Sophia : a Figure 2.7: an unmanned
Exploration Rover (MER) Humanoid aircraft
software-controlled flight plans in their embedded
systems, working in conjunction with onboard
sensors and GPS (Figure 2.7). Drones are being
used in many fields, such as journalism, filming Think and Reflect
and aerial photography, shipping or delivery at short Can a drone be helpful
distances, disaster management, search and rescue in the event of a
operations, healthcare, geographic mapping and natural calamity?
structural safety inspections, agriculture, wildlife
monitoring or pooching, besides law-enforcement and
border patrolling.

2.3 BIg dAtA

With technology making
an inroad into almost every
sphere of our lives, data
is being produced at a
colossal rate. Today, there
are over a billion Internet
users, and a majority of
the world’s web traffic is
coming from smartphones.
Figure 2.8 shows that at
the current pace, around
2.5 quintillion bytes of data
are created each day, and
the pace is increasing with
the continuous evolution of
the Internet of Things (IoT).
This results in the
generation of data sets
of enormous volume and
complexity called Big
Data. Such data cannot
be processed and analysed
using traditional data Figure 2.8: Sources of big data (numbers are approximate)

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20 InformatIcs PractIces – class XI

processing tools as the data is not only voluminous,

but also unstructured like our posts, instant messages
and chats, photographs that we share through various
sites, our tweets, blog articles, news items, opinion
Think and Reflect polls and their comments, audio/video chats, etc.
How are your digital Big data not only represents voluminous data, it also
activities contributing
to generation of Big
involves various challenges like integration, storage,
data? analysis, searching, processing, transfer, querying and
visualisation of such data. Big data sometimes hold rich
information and knowledge which is of high business
value, and therefore there is a keen effort in developing
software and methods to process and analyse big data.
2.3.1 Characteristics of Big Data
Big data exhibits following five characteristics shown in
Figure 2.9, that distinguish it from traditional data.
(A) Volume
The most prominent characteristic of big data is its
enormous size. If a particular data set is of such large
size that it is difficult to process it with traditional DBMS
tools, it can be termed as big data.
(B) Velocity
It represents the rate at which the data under
consideration is being generated and stored. Big data
has an exponentially higher rate of generation than
traditional data sets.
(C) Variety
It asserts that a data set has varied data, such as
structured, semi-structured and unstructured data.
Figure 2.9: Characteristics Some examples are text, images, videos, web pages and
of big data so on.
(D) Veracity
Big data can be sometimes inconsistent, biased, noisy
or there can be abnormality in the data or issues
with the data collection methods. Veracity refers to
the trustworthiness of the data because processing
such incorrect data can give wrong results or mislead
the interpretations.
(E) Value
Big data is not only just a big pile of data, but also
possess to have hidden patterns and useful knowledge
which can be of high business value. But as there is cost
of investment of resources in processing big data, we
should make a preliminary enquiry to see the potential

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emergIng trends 21

of the big data in terms of value discovery or else our

efforts could be in vain.
2.3.2 Data Analytics
Data analytics is the process of examining data sets
in order to draw conclusions about the information
they contain, with the aid of specialised systems
and software.
Data analytics technologies and techniques are
becoming popular day-by-day. They are used in
commercial industries to enable organisations to make
more informed business decisions. In the field of science
and technology, it can be useful for researchers to verify
or disprove scientific models, theories and hypotheses.
Pandas is a library of the programming language
Python that can be used as a tool to make data analysis
much simpler.

2.4 IntErnEt of thIngs (Iot)

The term computer network that we commonly use is
the network of computers. Such a network consists of a
laptop, desktop, server, or a portable device like tablet,
Activity 2.3
smartphone, smartwatch, etc., connected through
wire or wireless. We can communicate between these Explore and list a few
IoT devices available in
devices using Internet or LAN. Now imagine what if the market.
our bulbs, fans and refrigerator also became a part of
this network. How will they communicate with each
other, and what will they communicate? Think about
the advantages and tasks that can be accomplished
if all these devices with smart connectivity features
are able to communicate amongst themselves and
we are also able to communicate
with them using computers
or smartphones!
The ‘Internet of Things’ is a
network of devices that have an
embedded hardware and software
to communicate (connect and
exchange data) with other
devices on the same network
as shown in Figure 2.10. At
present, in a typical household,
many devices have advanced
hardware (microcontrollers) and
software. These devices are used Figure 2.10: Internet of Things (IoT)

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22 InformatIcs PractIces – class XI

in isolation from each other, with maximum human

intervention needed for operational directions and
input data. IoT tends to bring together these devices to
work in collaboration and assist each other in creating
an intelligent network of things. For example, if a
microwave oven, an air conditioner, door lock, CCTV
camera or other such devices are enabled to connect to
the Internet, we can access and remotely control them
on-the-go using our smartphone.
2.4.1 Web of Things (WoT)
Internet of Things allows us to interact with different
devices through Internet with the help of smartphones
or computers, thus creating a personal network. But to
interact with ‘n’ number of different devices, we need
Activity 2.4 to install ‘n’ different apps. Wouldn’t it be convenient
We use GPS to to have one interface to connect all the devices? The
navigate outdoors. VPS web is already being used as a system to communicate
is another emerging with each other. So, will it be possible to use the web
trend that uses
Augmented Reality.
in such a way that all things can communicate with
Explore and find its each other in the most efficient manner by integrating
other utilities. them together? Web of Things (WoT) allows the use of
web services to connect anything in the physical world,
besides human identities on web. It will pave way for
creating smart homes, smart offices, smart cities and
so on.
2.4.2 Sensors
What happens when you hold your mobile vertically
or horizontally? The display also changes to vertical or
horizontal with respect to the way we hold our mobile.
This is possible with the help of two sensors, namely
accelerometer and gyroscope (gyro). The accelerometer
sensor in the mobile phones detects the orientation of
the phone. The gyroscope sensors tracks rotation or
twist of your hand and add to the information supplied
by the accelerometer.
Sensors are very commonly used for monitoring
and observing elements in real world applications. The
evolution of smart electronic sensors is contributing in
a large way to the evolution of IoT. It will lead to creation
of new sensor-based, intelligent systems.
A smart sensor is a device that takes input from
the physical environment and uses built-in computing
resources to perform predefined functions upon
detection of specific input and then process data before
passing it on.

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emergIng trends 23

2.4.3 Smart Cities

With rapid urbanisation, the load on our cities is Think and Reflect
What are your ideas of
increasing day-by-day, and there are challenges in
transforming your city
management of resources like land water, waste, air into a smart city?
pollution, health and sanitation, traffic congestions,
public safety and security, besides the overall city
infrastructures including road, rail, bridge, electricity,
subways, disaster management, sports facilities, etc.
These challenges are forcing many city planners around
the world to look for smarter ways to manage them and
make cities sustainable and livable.
The idea of a
smart city as shown
in Figure 2.11 makes
use of computer
and communication
technology along with
IoT, WoT to manage and
distribute resources
efficiently. The smart
building shown here
uses sensors to detect
earthquake tremors
and then warn nearby
buildings so that they
can prepare themselves
accordingly. The smart
bridge uses wireless
sensors to detect
any loose bolt, cable
or crack. It alerts Figure 2.11: Smart City
concerned authorities through SMS. The smart tunnel
also uses wireless sensors to detect any leakage or
congestion in the tunnel. This information can be sent
as wireless signals across the network of sensor nodes
to a centralised computer for further analysis.
Every sphere of life in a city like transportation
systems, power plants, water supply networks, waste
management, law enforcement, information systems,
schools, libraries, hospitals and other community
services work in unison to optimise the efficiency of city
operations and services.

2.5 cloud computIng

Cloud computing is an emerging trend in the field of
information technology, where computer-based services
are delivered over the Internet or the cloud, for the case

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24 InformatIcs PractIces – class XI

of their accessibility form any where using any smart

device. The services comprise software, hardware
(servers), databases, storage, etc. These resources are
provided by companies called cloud service providers
and usually charge on pay per use basis, like the way
we pay for electricity usage. We already use cloud
services while storing our pictures and files as backup
on Internet, or host a website on the Internet. Through
cloud computing, a user can run a bigger application
or process a large amount of data without having the
required storage or processing power on their personal
computer as long as they are connected to the Internet.
Besides other numerous features, cloud computing
offers cost-effective, on-demand resources. A user can
avail need-based resources from the cloud at a very
reasonable cost.
2.5.1 Cloud Services
A better way to understand the cloud is to interpret
everything as a service. A service corresponds to any
facility provided by the cloud. There are three standard
models to categorise different computing services
delivered through cloud as shown in Figure 2.12. These
are Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a
Service (PaaS), and Software as a Service (SaaS).
(A) Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)
The IaaS providers can offer different kinds of computing
infrastructure, such as servers, virtual machines (VM),
storage and backup facility, network components,
operating systems or any other
hardware or software. Using
IaaS from the cloud, a user can
use the hardware infrastructure
located at a remote location to
configure, deploy and execute
any software application on
that cloud infrastructure. They
can outsource the hardware
and software on demand basis
and pay as per the usage,
thereby they can save the cost
of software, hardware and other
infrastructures as well as the
cost of setting up, maintenance
Figure 2.12: Cloud Computing Services
and security.

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emergIng trends 25

(B) Platform as a Service (PaaS)

Through this service, a user can install and execute
an application without worrying about the underlying
Activity 2.5
infrastructure and their setup. That is, PaaS provides
a platform or environment to develop, test, and deliver Name a few data
centers in India along
software applications. Suppose we have developed a with the major services
web application using MySQL and Python. To run this that they provide.
application online, we can avail a pre-configured Apache
server from cloud having MySQL and Python pre-
installed. Thus, we are not required to install MySQL
and Python on the cloud, nor do we need to configure
the web server (Apache, nginx). In PaaS, the user has
complete control over the deployed application and its
configuration. It provides a deployment environment
for developers at a much reduced cost lessening the
complexity of buying and managing the underlying
hardware and software.
(C) Software as a Service (SaaS)
SaaS provides on-demand access to application software,
usually requiring a licensing or subscription by the
user. While using Google doc, Microsoft Office 365,
Drop Box, etc., to edit a document online, we use SaaS
from cloud. A user is not concerned about installation
or configuration of the software application as long
as the required software is accessible. Like PaaS, a
user is provided access to the required configuration
settings of the application software, that they are using
at present.
In all of the above standard service models, a user can
use on-demand infrastructure or platform or software
and is usually charged as per the usage, thereby
eliminating the need of a huge investment upfront for
a new or evolving organisation. In order to utilise and
harness the benefits of cloud computing, Government
of India has embarked upon an ambitious initiative —
‘GI Cloud’ which has been named as ‘MeghRaj’ (https://
cloud.gov.in).

2.6 grId computIng

A grid is a computer network of geographically
dispersed and heterogeneous computational resources
as shown in Figure 2.13. Unlike cloud, whose primary
focus is to provide services, a grid is more application
specific and creates a sense of a virtual supercomputer

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26 InformatIcs PractIces – class XI

with an enormous processing power and storage. The

Think and Reflect constituent resources are called nodes. These different
How can some of nodes temporarily come together to solve a single large
the emerging trends task and to reach a common goal.
discussed in this
Nowadays, countless computational nodes ranging
chapter be used as
assistive tools for from hand-held mobile devices to personal computers and
people with disabilities? workstations are connected to Local Area Network (LAN)
or Internet. Therefore, it is economically feasible to
reuse or utilise their resources like memory as well as
processing power. The grid provides an opportunity to
solve computationally intense scientific and research
problems without actually procuring a costly hardware.
Grid can be of two types — (i) Data grid, used to
manage large and distributed data having the required
multi-user access, and (ii) CPU or Processor grid, where
processing is moved from one PC to another as needed
or a large task is divided into subtasks, and allotted to
various nodes for parallel processing.
Grid computing is different from IaaS cloud
Users sharing their resources service. In case of IaaS cloud service, there
is a service provider who rents the required
infrastructure to the users. Whereas in grid
computing, multiple computing nodes join
together to solve a common computational
problem.
Grid Resource
Management To set up a grid, by connecting numerous
System nodes in terms of data as well as CPU, a
middleware is required to implement the
distributed processor architecture. The Globus
toolkit (http://toolkit.globus.org/toolkit) is
one such software toolkit used for building
grids, and it is as open source. It includes
Users sharing their resources
software for security, resource management,
Figure 2.13: Grid computing data management, communication, fault
detection, etc.

2.7 BlockchAIns
Traditionally, we perform digital transactions by storing
data in a centralised database and the transactions
performed are updated one by one on the database. That
is how the ticket booking websites or banks operate.
However, since all the data is stored on a central
location, there are chances of data being hacked or lost.
The blockchain technology works on the concept of
decentralised and shared database where each computer

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emergIng trends 27

has a copy of the database. A block can be thought

as a secured chunk of data or valid transaction. Each
block has some data called its header, which is visible
to every other node, while only the owner has access to
the private data of the block. Such blocks form a chain
called blockchain as shown in Figure 2.14. We can
define blockchain as a system that allows a group of
connected computers to maintain a single updated and
secure ledger. Each computer or node that participates
in the blockchain receives a full copy of the database. It
maintains an ‘append only’ open ledger which is updated
only after all the nodes within the network authenticate
the transaction. Safety and security of the transactions
are ensured because all the members in the network
keep a copy of the blockchain and so it is not possible
for a single member of the network to make changes or
alter data.

The request is
Someone requests broadcast to all
a transaction nodes in the
network

If verified by all nodes,

The transaction the block get added in the
is complete already existing chain of
blocks

Figure 2.14: Block chain technology

The most popular application of blockchains

technology is in digital currency. However, due to its
decentralised nature with openness and security,
blockchains are being seen as one of the ways to ensure
transparency, accountability and efficiency in business
as well as in governance systems.
For example, in healthcare, better data sharing
between healthcare providers would result in a higher
Think and Reflect
probability of accurate diagnosis, more effective Name any two areas
treatments, and the overall increased ability of healthcare other than those given
organisations to deliver cost-effective care. Another where the concept of
potential application can be for land registration records, blockchain technology
can be useful.
to avoid various disputes arising out of land ownership

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28 InformatIcs PractIces – class XI

notEs claims and encroachments. A blockchain based voting

system can solve the problem of vote alterations and
other issues. Since everything gets stored in the ledger,
voting can become more transparent and authentic. The
blockchain technology can be used in diverse sectors,
such as banking, media, telecom, travel and hospitality
and other areas.

summAry
• Artificial Intelligence endeavours to simulate the
natural intelligence of human beings into machines
thus making them intelligent.
• Machine learning comprises of algorithms that use
data to learn on their own and make predictions.
• Natural language processing (NLP) facilitates
communicating with intelligent systems using a
natural language.
• Virtual reality allows a user to look at, explore, and
interact with the virtual surroundings, just like one
can do in the real world.
• The superimposition of computer-generated
perceptual information over the existing physical
surroundings is called augmented reality.
• Robotics can be defined as the science primarily
associated with the design, fabrication, theory, and
application of robots.
• Big data holds rich information and knowledge which
can be of high business value. Five characteristics
of big data are: Volume, Velocity, Variety, Veracity,
and Value.
• Data analytics is the process of examining data sets
in order to draw conclusions about the information
they contain.
• The Internet of Things (IoT) is a network of devices
that have an embedded hardware and software to
communicate (connect and exchange data) with
other devices on the same network.
• A sensor is a device that takes input from the
physical environment and uses built-in computing
resources to perform predefined functions upon
detection of specific input and then processes data
before passing it on.

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emergIng trends 29

• Cloud computing allows resources located at notEs

remote locations to be made available to anyone
anywhere. Cloud services can be Infrastructure as
a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and
Software as a Service (SaaS).
• Block chair technology uses a shared data base of
chaired blocks where copies of data base exist on
multiple computers.

ExErcIsE
1. List some of the cloud-based services that you are using
at present.
2. What do you understand by the Internet of Things? List
some of its potential applications.
3. Write a short note on the following:
a) Cloud computing
b) Big data and its characteristics
4. Explain the following along with their applications.
a) Artificial Intelligence
b) Machine Learning
5. Differentiate between cloud computing and grid
computing with suitable examples.
6. Justify the following statement-
‘Storage of data is cost effective and time saving in cloud
computing.’
7. What is on-demand service? How it is provided in cloud
computing?
8. Write examples of the following:
a) Government provided cloud computing platform
b) Large scale private cloud service providers and the
services they provide
9. A company interested in cloud computing is looking for a
provider who offers a set of basic services such as virtual
server provisioning and on-demand storage that can be
combined into a platform for deploying and running
customised applications. What type of cloud computing
model fits these requirements?
a) Platform as a Service
b) Software as a Service
c) Infrastructure as a Service

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30 InformatIcs PractIces – class XI

notEs 10. Which is not one of the features of IoT devices?

a) Remotely controllable
b) Programmable
c) Can turn themselves off if necessary
d) All of the above
11. If Government plans to make a smart school by
applying IoT concepts, how can each of the following
be implemented in order to transform a school into IoT
enabled smart school?
a) e-textbooks
b) Smart boards
c) Online tests
d) Wifi sensors on classrooms doors
e) Sensors in buses to monitor their location
f) Wearables (watches or smart belts) for attendance
monitoring
12. Five friends plan to try a startup. However, they have
a limited budget and limited computer infrastructure.
How can they avail the benefits of cloud services to
launch their startup?
13. Governments provide various scholarships to students
of different classes. Prepare a report on how blockchain
technology can be used to promote accountability,
transparency and efficiency in distribution of
scholarships?
14. How IoT and WoT are related?
15. Match the following:
Column A Column B

You got a reminder to take Smart Parking

medication
You got a sms alert that you Smart Wearable
forgot to lock the door

You got the sms alert that Home Automation

parking space is available near
your block
You turned off your LED TV Smart Health
from your wrist watch

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Brief Overview Chapter

of Python 3

In this chapter

»» Introduction to Python
»» Python Keywords
“Don't you hate code that's not properly »» Identifiers
indented? Making it [indenting] part of »» Variables
the syntax guarantees that all code is »» Data Types
properly indented.” »» Operators
»» Expressions
— G. van Rossum »» Input and Output
»» Debugging
»» Functions
»» if..else Statements
3.1 Introduction to Python »» for Loop
»» Nested Loops
An ordered set of instructions or commands to be
executed by a computer is called a program. The
language used to specify those set of instructions
to the computer is called a programming language
for example Python, C, C++, Java, etc.
This chapter gives a brief overview of Python
programming language. Python is a very popular
and easy to learn programming language, created
by Guido van Rossum in 1991. It is used in a
variety of fields, including software development,
web development, scientific computing, big data

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32 Informatics Practices – Class XI

and Artificial Intelligence. The programs given in this book

are written using Python 3.7.0. However, one can install
any version of Python 3 to follow the programs given.
Download Python 3.1.1 Working with Python
The latest version of To write and run (execute) a Python program, we need
Python is available on the to have a Python interpreter installed on our computer
official website:
or we can use any online Python interpreter. The
https://www.python. interpreter is also called Python shell. A sample screen
org/
of Python interpreter is shown in Figure 3.1. Here, the
symbol >>> is called Python prompt, which indicates
that the interpreter is ready to receive instructions.
We can type commands or statements on this prompt
for execution.

Figure 3.1: Python Interpreter or Shell

3.1.2 Execution Modes

There are two ways to run a program using the Python
interpreter:
a) Interactive mode
b) Script mode
(A) Interactive Mode
In the interactive mode, we can type a Python statement
on the >>> prompt directly. As soon as we press enter,
the interpreter executes the statement and displays the
result(s), as shown in Figure 3.2.
Working in the interactive mode is convenient for
testing a single line code for instant execution. But in
the interactive mode, we cannot save the statements for

Figure 3.2: Python Interpreter in Interactive Mode

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Brief Overview of Python 33

future use and we have to retype the statements to run

them again.
(B) Script Mode
In the script mode, we can write a Python program in
a file, save it and then use the interpreter to execute
the program from the file. Such program files have
a .py extension and they are also known as scripts.
Usually, beginners learn Python in interactive mode, IDLE : Integrated
but for programs having more than a few lines, we Development and
should always save the code in files for future use. Learning Environment
Python scripts can be created using any editor. Python
has a built-in editor called IDLE which can be used
to create programs. After opening the IDLE, we can
click File>New File to create a new file, then write our
program on that file and save it with a desired name.
By default, the Python scripts are saved in the Python
installation folder.

Figure 3.3: Python Code in Script Mode (prog3-1.py)

To execute a Python program in script mode,

a) Open the program using an editor, for example
IDLE as shown in Figure 3.3.
b) In IDLE, go to [Run]->[Run Module] to execute the
prog3-1.py as shown in Figure 3.4.
c) The output appears on shell as shown in Figure
3.5.

Figure 3.4: Execution of Python in Script mode using IDLE

Figure 3.5: Output of a Program prog 3-1.py executed in Script Mode

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34 Informatics Practices – Class XI

Notes 3.2 Python Keywords

Keywords are reserved words. Each keyword has a
specific meaning to the Python interpreter. As Python
is case sensitive, keywords must be written exactly as
given in Table 3.1.
Table 3.1 Python keywords
False class finally is return
None continue for lambda try
True def from nonlocal while
and del global not with
as elif if or yield
assert else import pass
break except in raise

3.3 Identifiers
In programming languages, identifiers are names used
to identify a variable, function, or other entities in a
program. The rules for naming an identifier in Python
are as follows:
• The name should begin with an uppercase or a
lowercase alphabet or an underscore sign (_). This
may be followed by any combination of characters
a-z, A-Z, 0-9 or underscore (_). Thus, an identifier
cannot start with a digit.
• It can be of any length. (However, it is preferred to
keep it short and meaningful).
• It should not be a keyword or reserved word given in
Table 3.1.
• We cannot use special symbols like !, @, #, $, %, etc.
in identifiers.
For example, to find the average of marks obtained
by a student in three subjects namely Maths, English,
Informatics Practices (IP), we can choose the identifiers
as marksMaths, marksEnglish, marksIP and avg
rather than a, b, c, or A, B, C, as such alphabets do not
give any clue about the data that variable refers to.
avg = (marksMaths + marksEnglish + marksIP)/3
3.4 Variables
Variable is an identifier whose value can change. For
example variable age can have different value for
different person. Variable name should be unique in a
program. Value of a variable can be string (for example,

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Brief Overview of Python 35

‘b’, ‘Global Citizen’), number (for example 10,71,80.52)

or any combination of alphanumeric (alphabets and Comments are used
numbers for example ‘b10’) characters. In Python, we to add a remark or
can use an assignment statement to create new variables a note in the source
and assign specific values to them. code. Comments
are not executed by
gender = 'M'
interpreter. They
message = "Keep Smiling" are added with the
price = 987.9 purpose of making
the source code
Variables must always be assigned values before easier for humans
they are used in the program, otherwise it will lead to understand. They
to an error. Wherever a variable name occurs in the are used primarily
program, the interpreter replaces it with the value of to document the
meaning and purpose
that particular variable.
of source code.
In Python, a single
Program 3-2 Write a Python program to find the sum line comment starts
with # (hash sign).
of two numbers. Everything following
the # till the end of
#Program 3-2
that line is treated
#To find the sum of two given numbers as a comment and
num1 = 10 the interpreter
num2 = 20 simply ignores it
result = num1 + num2 while executing the
statement.
print(result)
#print function in python displays the output
Output:
30
Program 3-3 Write a Python program to find the area
of a rectangle given that its length is 10
units and breadth is 20 units.
#Program 3-3
#To find the area of a rectangle
length = 10
breadth = 20
area = length * breadth
print(area)
Output:
200
3.5 Data Types
Every value belongs to a specific data type in Python.
Data type identifies the type of data which a variable
can hold and the operations that can be performed on
those data. Figure 3.6 enlists the data types available
in Python.

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36 Informatics Practices – Class XI

Dictionaries

Figure 3.6: Different Data Types in Python

3.5.1 Number
Number data type stores numerical values only. It is
further classified into three different types: int, float
and complex.
Table 3.2 Numeric data types
Type/ Class Description Examples
int integer numbers -12, -3, 0, 123, 2
float floating point numbers -2.04, 4.0, 14.23
complex complex numbers 3 + 4i, 2 - 2i

Boolean data type (bool) is a subtype of integer. It

is a unique data type, consisting of two constants, True
and False. Boolean True value is non-zero. Boolean
False is the value zero.
Let us now try to execute few statements in interactive
mode to determine the data type of the variable using
built-in function type().
Example 3.1
>>> quantity = 10
>>> type(quantity)
<class 'int'>

>>> Price = -1921.9

>>> type(price)
<class 'float'>
Variables of simple data types like integer, float, boolean
etc. hold single value. But such variables are not useful
to hold multiple data values, for example, names of the
months in a year, names of students in a class, names
and numbers in a phone book or the list of artefacts in a
museum. For this, Python provides sequence data types like
Strings, Lists, Tuples, and mapping data type Dictionaries.
3.5.2 Sequence
A Python sequence is an ordered collection of items,
where each item is indexed by an integer value. Three

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Brief Overview of Python 37

types of sequence data types available in Python are Notes

Strings, Lists and Tuples. A brief introduction to these
data types is as follows:
(A) String
String is a group of characters. These characters may be
alphabets, digits or special characters including spaces.
String values are enclosed either in single quotation
marks (for example ‘Hello’) or in double quotation marks
(for example “Hello”). The quotes are not a part of the
string, they are used to mark the beginning and end of
the string for the interpreter. For example,
>>> str1 = 'Hello Friend'
>>> str2 = "452"
We cannot perform numerical operations on strings,
even when the string contains a numeric value. For
example str2 is a numeric string.
(B) List
List is a sequence of items separated by commas and
items are enclosed in square brackets [ ]. Note that
items may be of different date types.

Example 3.2
#To create a list
>>> list1 = [5, 3.4, "New Delhi", "20C", 45]
#print the elements of the list list1
>>> list1
[5, 3.4, 'New Delhi', '20C', 45]
(C) Tuple
Tuple is a sequence of items separated by commas and
items are enclosed in parenthesis ( ). This is unlike list,
where values are enclosed in brackets [ ]. Once created,
we cannot change items in the tuple. Similar to List,
items may be of different data types.
Example 3.3
#create a tuple tuple1
>>> tuple1 = (10, 20, "Apple", 3.4, 'a')
#print the elements of the tuple tuple1
>>> print(tuple1)
(10, 20, "Apple", 3.4, 'a')

3.5.3 Mapping
Mapping is an unordered data type in Python. Currently,
there is only one standard mapping data type in Python
called Dictionary.

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38 Informatics Practices – Class XI

(A) Dictionary
Dictionary in Python holds data items in key-value pairs
and Items are enclosed in curly brackets { }. dictionaries
permit faster access to data. Every key is separated from
its value using a colon (:) sign. The key value pairs of
a dictionary can be accessed using the key. Keys are
usually of string type and their values can be of any data
type. In order to access any value in the dictionary, we
have to specify its key in square brackets [ ].
Example 3.4
#create a dictionary
>>> dict1 = {'Fruit':'Apple',
'Climate':'Cold', 'Price(kg)':120}
>>> print(dict1)
{'Fruit': 'Apple', 'Climate': 'Cold',
'Price(kg)': 120}
#getting value by specifying a key
Python compares two >>> print(dict1['Price(kg)'])
strings lexicographically 120
(According to the
theory and practice of
composing and writing
3.6 Operators
dictionary), using ASCII An operator is used to perform specific mathematical or
value of the characters. logical operation on values. The values that the operator
If the first character of
works on are called operands. For example, in the
both strings are same,
the second character is expression 10 + num, the value 10, and the variable num
compared, and so on. are operands and the + (plus) sign is an operator. Python
supports several kind of operators, their categorisation
is briefly explained in this section.
3.6.1 Arithmetic Operators
Python supports arithmetic operators (Table 3.3) to
perform the four basic arithmetic operations as well as
modular division, floor division and exponentiation.
'+' operator can also be used to concatenate two
strings on either side of the operator.
>>> str1 = "Hello"
>>> str2 = "India"
>>> str1 + str2
'HelloIndia'
'*' operator repeats the item on left side of the
operator if first operand is a string and second operand
is an integer value.
>>> str1 = 'India'
>>> str1 * 2
'IndiaIndia'

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Brief Overview of Python 39

Table 3.3 Arithmetic operators in Python

Operator Operation Description Example (Try in Lab)
+ Addition Adds two numeric values on >>> num1 = 5
either side of the operator >>> num2 = 6
>>> num1 + num2
11
- Subtraction Subtracts the operand on the >>> num1 = 5
right from the operand on the left >>> num2 = 6
>>> num1 - num2
-1

* Multiplication Multiplies the two values on both >>> num1 = 5

sides of the operator >>> num2 = 6
>>> num1 * num2
30
/ Division Divides the operand on the left >>> num1 = 5
by the operand on the right of the >>> num2 = 2
operator and returns the quotient >>> num1 / num2
2.5
% Modulus Divides the operand on the left >>> num1 = 13
by the operand on the right and >>> num2 = 5
returns the remainder >>> num1 % num2
3
// Floor Division Divides the operand on the left >>> num1 = 5
by the operand on the right and >>> num2 = 2
returns the quotient by removing >>> num1 // num2
the decimal part. It is sometimes 2
also called integer division. >>> num2 // num1
0
** Exponent Raise the base to the power of the >>> num1 = 3
exponent. That is, multiply the >>> num2 = 4
base as many times as given in >>> num1 ** num2
the exponent 81

Operators (+) and (*) work in similar manner for other

sequence data types like list and tuples.
3.6.2 Relational Operators
Relational operator compares the values of the operands
on its either side and determines the relationship among
them. Conside the given Python variables num1 = 10,
num2 = 0, num3 = 10, str1 = "Good", str2 =
"Afternoon" for the following examples in Table 3.4:
Table 3.4 Relational operators in Python
Operator Operation Description Example (Try in Lab)
>>> num1 == num2
If values of two operands are
Equals to False
== equal, then the condition is True,
>> str1 == str2
otherwise it is False.
False

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40 Informatics Practices – Class XI

>>> num1 != num2

If values of two operands are not True
equal, then condition is True, >>> str1 != str2
!= Not equal to
otherwise it is False True
>>> num1 != num3
False
If the value of the left operand is >>> num1 > num2
greater than the value of the right True
> Greater than
operand, then condition is True, >>> str1 > str2
otherwise it is False. True
If the value of the left operand is
less than the value of the right >>> num1 < num3
< Less than
operand, the condition is true False
otherwise it is False
Similarly, there are other relational operators like <=
and >=.
3.6.3 Assignment Operators
Assignment operator assigns or changes the value of
the variable on its left, as shown in Table 3.5.
Table 3.5 Assignment operators in Python
Operator Description Example (Try in Lab)
= Assigns value from right side operand to left >>> num1 = 2
side operand >>> num2 = num1
>>> num2
2
>>> country = 'India'
>>> country
'India'
+= It adds the value of right side operand to the left >>> num1 = 10
side operand and assigns the result to the left >>> num2 = 2
side operand. >>> num1 += num2
Note: x + = y is same as x = x + y >>> num1
12
>>> num2
2
-= It subtracts the value of right side operand >>> num1 = 10
from the left side operand and assigns the >>> num2 = 2
result to left side operand. >>> num1 -= num2
Note: x − = y is same as x = x − y >>> num1
8
Similarly, there are other assignment operators like
*=, /=, %=, //=, and **=.
3.6.4 Logical Operators
There are three logical operators (Table 3.6) supported
by Python. These operators (and, or, not) are to be
written in lower case only. The logical operator evaluates
to either True or False based on the logical operands
on its either side.

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Brief Overview of Python 41

Table 3.6 Logical operators in Python

Operator Operation Description Example (Try in Lab)
and Logical AND If both operands are True, >>> num1 = 10
then condition becomes >>> num2 = -20
True >>> num1 == 10 and num2 == -20
True
>>> num1 == 10 and num2 == 10
False

or Logical OR If any of the two operands >>> num1 = 10

are True, then condition >>> num2 = 2
becomes True >>> num1 >= 10 or num2 >= 10
True
>>> num1 <= 5 or num2 >= 10
False
not Logical NOT Used to reverse the logical >>> num1 = 10
state of its operand >>> not (num1 == 20)
True
>>> not (num1 == 10)
False

3.6.5 Membership Operators

Membership operator (Table 3.7) is used to check if a
value is a member of the given sequence or not.
Table 3.7 Membership operators in Python
Operator Description Example (Try in Lab)
in Returns True if the variable or value is found in the >>> numSeq = [1,2,3]
specified sequence and False otherwise >>> 2 in numSeq
True
>>> '1' in numSeq
False
#'1' is a string while
#numSeq contains number 1.
not in Returns True if the variable/value is not found in >>> numSeq = [1,2,3]
the specified sequence and False otherwise >>> 10 not in numSeq
True
>>> 1 not in numSeq
False

3.7 Expressions
An expression is defined as a combination of constants,
variables and operators. An expression always evaluates
to a value. A value or a standalone variable is also
considered as an expression but a standalone operator
is not an expression. Some examples of valid expressions
are given below.
(i) num – 20.4 (iii) 23/3 -5 * 7(14 -2)
(ii) 3.0 + 3.14 (iv) "Global"+"Citizen"

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42 Informatics Practices – Class XI

Notes 3.7.1 Precedence of Operators

So far we have seen different operators and examples
of their usage. When an expression contains more than
one operator, their precedence (order or hierarchy)
determines which operator should be applied first.
Higher precedence operator is evaluated before the
lower precedence operator. In the following example, '*'
and '/' have higher precedence than '+' and '-'.
Note:
a) Parenthesis can be used to override the precedence of
operators. The expression within () is evaluated first.
b) For operators with equal precedence, the expression
is evaluated from left to right.
Example 3.5 How will Python evaluate the following
expression?
20 + 30 * 40
Solution:
#precedence of * is more than that of +
= 20 + 1200 #Step 1
= 1220 #Step 2
Example 3.6 How will Python evaluate the following
expression?
(20 + 30) * 40
Solution:
= (20 + 30) * 40 # Step 1
#using parenthesis(), we have forced
precedence of + to be more than that of *
= 50 * 40 # Step 2
= 2000 # Step 3
Example 3.7 How will the following expression be
evaluated?
15.0 / 4.0 + (8 + 3.0)
Solution:
= 15.0 / 4.0 + (8.0 + 3.0) #Step 1
= 15.0 / 4.0 + 11.0 #Step 2
= 3.75 + 11.0 #Step 3
= 14.75 #Step 4

3.8 Input and Output

Sometimes, we need to enter data or enter choices into
a program. In Python, we have the input() function
for taking values entered by input device such as a
keyboard. The input() function prompts user to enter
data. It accepts all user input (whether alphabets,

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Brief Overview of Python 43

numbers or special character) as string. The syntax for Notes

input() is:
variable = input([Prompt])
Prompt is the string we may like to display on the
screen prior to taking the input, but it is optional. The
input() takes exactly what is typed from the keyboard,
converts it into a string and assigns it to the variable on
left hand side of the assignment operator (=).
Example 3.8
>>> fname = input("Enter your first name: ")
Enter your first name: Arnab
>>> age = input("Enter your age: ")
Enter your age: 19
The variable fname gets the string ‘Arnab’ as input.
Similarly, the variable age gets '19' as string. We can
change the datatype of the string data accepted from
user to an appropriate numeric value. For example, the
int() function will convert the accepted string to an
integer. If the entered string is non-numeric, an error
will be generated.
Example 3.9
#function int() to convert string to integer
>>> age = int(input("Enter your age: "))
Enter your age: 19
>>> type(age)
<class 'int'>
Python uses the print() function to output data
to standard output device — the screen. The function
print() evaluates the expression before displaying it
on the screen. The syntax for print() is:
print(value)
Example 3.10
Statement Output
print("Hello") Hello
print(10*2.5) 25.0

3.9 Debugging
Due to errors, a program may not execute or may
generate wrong output. :
i) Syntax errors
ii) Logical errors
iii) Runtime errors

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44 Informatics Practices – Class XI

Notes 3.9.1 Syntax Errors

Like any programming language, Python has rules that
determine how a program is to be written. This is called
syntax. The interpreter can interpret a statement of a
program only if it is syntactically correct. For example,
parentheses must be in pairs, so the expression (10 +
12) is syntactically correct, whereas (7 + 11 is not due
to absence of right parenthesis. If any syntax error is
present, the interpreter shows error message(s) and
stops the execution there. Such errors need to be
removed before execution of the program.
3.9.2 Logical Errors
A logical error/bug (called semantic error) does not stop
execution but the program behaves incorrectly and
produces undesired /wrong output. Since the program
interprets successfully even when logical errors are
present in it, it is sometimes difficult to identify these
errors.
For example, if we wish to find the average of two
numbers 10 and 12 and we write the code as 10 + 12/2,
it would run successfully and produce the result 16,
which is wrong. The correct code to find the average
should have been (10 + 12) /2 to get the output as 11.
3.9.3 Runtime Error
A runtime error causes abnormal termination of
program while it is executing. Runtime error is when the
statement is correct syntactically, but the interpreter
can not execute it.
For example, we have a statement having division
operation in the program. By mistake, if the denominator
value is zero then it will give a runtime error like “division
by zero”.
The process of identifying and removing logical
errors and runtime errors is called debugging. We need
to debug a program so that is can run successfully and
generate the desired output.

3.10 Functions
A function refers to a set of statements or instructions
grouped under a name that perform specified tasks.
For repeated or routine tasks, we define a function. A
function is defined once and can be reused at multiple

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Brief Overview of Python 45

places in a program by simply writing the function Notes

name, i.e., by calling that function.
Suppose we have a program which requires to
calculate compound interest at multiple places. Now
instead of writing the formula to calculate the interest
every time, we can create a function called CalcCompInt
and inside that function we write the code to take
inputs (like interest rate, duration, principle), calculate
interest, and display output. We can simply call the
function by writing the function name CalcCompInt
whenever compound interest is to be computed and
thus reuse the code to save time and efforts.
Python has many predefined functions called built‑in
functions. We have already used two built-in functions
print() and input(). A module is a python file in
which multiple functions are grouped together. These
functions can be easily used in a Python program by
importing the module using import command. Use
of built‑in functions makes programming faster and
efficient. To use a built‑in function we must know the
following about that function:
• Function Name — name of the function.
• Arguments — While calling a function, we may pass
value(s), called argument, enclosed in parenthesis,
to the function. The function works based on these
values. A function may or may not have argument(s).
• Return Value − A function may or may not return one
or more values. A function performs operations on the
basis of argument (s) passed to it and the result is
passed back to the calling point. Some functions do
not return any value.
Let us consider the following Python program using
three built-in functions input(), int() and print():
#Calculate square of a number
num = int(input("Enter the first number"))
square = num * num
print("the square of", num, " is ", square)
Observe:
• Two built‑in functions are used in the first statement,
int() and input(). The third line has a function
print().
• The input function accepts an argument, “Enter your
name”. Argument(s) is the value(s) passed within
the parenthesis.

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46 Informatics Practices – Class XI

Notes • Similarly the print function has four arguments "the

square of", num, "is", square separated by
commas.
• The int function in the first line takes as argument
the value entered by the user from the keyboard and
converts it into a string and returns it. Thus the
return value from the int() function is an integer.
Some of the most commonly used built‑in
functions in Python are listed in Table 3.8 under four
broad categories.
Table 3.8 Some commonly used built-in functions in
Python

Input/ Datatype Mathematical Other

Output Conversion Functions Functions
input() bool() abs() __import__()
print() chr() divmod() len()
dict() max() range()
float() min() type()
int() pow()
list() sum()
ord()
set()
str()
tuple()

3.11 if..else Statements

Usually statements in a program are executed one after
another. However, there are situations when we have
more than one option to choose from, based on the
outcome of certain conditions. This can be done using if..
else conditional statements. Conditional statements let
us write program to do different tasks or take different
paths based on the outcome of the conditions.
There are three ways to write if..else statements:
• if statement — executes the statement(s) inside if
when the condition is true. ‘
Example 3.11
age = int(input("Enter your age "))
if age >= 18: # use ‘:’ to indicate end of
condition.
print("Eligible to vote")

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Brief Overview of Python 47

• if...else statement executes the statement(s)

inside if when the condition is true, otherwise
Python uses
executes the statement(s) inside else (when the indentation for block
condition is false) as well as for nested
#Program to subtract smaller number from the block structures.
#larger number and display the difference. Leading whitespace
(spaces and tabs)
num1 = int(input("Enter first number: "))
at the beginning
num2 = int(input("Enter second number: ")) of a statement is
if num1 > num2: called indentation.
diff = num1 - num2 In Python, the same
level of indentation
else: associates statements
diff = num2 - num1 into a single block of
print("The difference of",num1,"and",num2, code. The interpreter
"is",diff) checks indentation
levels very strictly
Output: and throws up syntax
Enter first number: 5 errors if indentation
Enter second number: 6 is not correct. It is
a common practice
The difference of 5 and 6 is 1 to use a single tab
• if...elif....else is use dot check multiple for each level of
indentation.
conditions and execute statements accordingly.
Meaning of elif is elseif. We can also write elseif
instead of elif for more clarity.

Example 3.12 Check whether a number is positive,

negative, or zero.
number = int(input("Enter a number: ")
if number > 0:
print("Number is positive")
elif number < 0:
print("Number is negative")
else:
print("Number is zero")
When the conditional statements appear, the
Python interpreter executes code inside one block that
is selected based on the condition. Number of elif is
dependent on the number of conditions to be checked.
If the first condition is false, then the next condition
is checked, and so on. If one of the conditions is true,
then the corresponding indented block executes, and
the if statement terminates. After that, the statements
outside the if..else are executed or the program
terminates if there are no further statements.

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48 Informatics Practices – Class XI

3.12 For Loop

Sometimes we need to repeat certain things for a
particular number of times. For example, a program has
to display attendance for every student of a class. Here
the program has to execute the print statement for
every student. In programming, this kind of repetition
is called looping or iteration, and it is done using for
statement. The for statement is used to iterate over
a range of values or a sequence. The loop is executed
for each item in the range. The values can be numeric,
string, list, or tuple.
When all the items in the range are exhausted, the
statements within loop are not executed and Python
interpreter starts executing the statements immediately
following the for loop. While using for loop, we should
know in advance the number of times the loop will
execute.
Syntax of the for Loop:
for <control-variable> in <sequence/items in
range>:
<statements inside body of the
loop>
Program 3-4 Program to
print even
numbers in a
given sequence
using for loop.
#Program 3-4
#Print even numbers in the given sequence
numbers = [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10]
for num in numbers:
if (num % 2) == 0:
print(num,'is an even Number')
Output:
2 is an even Number
4 is an even Number
6 is an even Number
8 is an even Number
10 is an even Number
Note: Body of the loop is indented with respect to the for statement.

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Brief Overview of Python 49

3.12.1 The range() Function

The range() is a built-in function in Python. Syntax of
range() function is:
range([start], stop[, step])
It is used to create a list containing a sequence of
integers from the given start value upto stop value
(excluding stop value), with a difference of the given
step value. If start value is not specified, by default
the list starts from 0. If step is also not specified, by
default the value is incremented by 1 in each iteration.
All parameters of range() function must be integers. The
step parameter can be a positive or a negative integer
excluding zero.

Example 3.13
>>> list(range(10))
[0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9]
#start value is given as 2
>>> list(range(2, 10))
[2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9]
#step value is 5 and start value is 0
>>> list(range(0, 30, 5))
[0, 5, 10, 15, 20, 25]
#step value is -1. Hence, decreasing
#sequence is generated
>>> list(range(0, -9, -1))
[0, -1, -2, -3, -4, -5, -6, -7, -8]
The function range() is often used in for loops for
generating a sequence of numbers.
Program 3-5 Program to print the multiples of 10 for
numbers in a given range.
#Program 3-5
#Print multiples of 10 for numbers in a range
for num in range(5):
if num > 0:
print(num * 10)
Output:
10
20
30
40

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50 Informatics Practices – Class XI

3.13 Nested Loops

A loop may contain another loop inside it. A loop inside
another loop is called a nested loop.
Program 3-6 Program to
demonstrate
working of
nested for
loops.

#Program 3-6
#Demonstrate working of nested for loops
for var1 in range(3):
print( "Iteration " + str(var1 + 1) + " of outer loop")
for var2 in range(2): #nested loop
print(var2 + 1)
print("Out of inner loop")
print("Out of outer loop")
Output:
Iteration 1 of outer loop
1
2
Out of inner loop
Iteration 2 of outer loop
1
2
Out of inner loop
Iteration 3 of outer loop
1
2
Out of inner loop
Out of outer loop

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Brief Overview of Python 51

Summary Notes
• Python is an open-source, high level, interpreter-
based language that can be used for a multitude of
scientific and non-scientific computing purposes.
• Comments are non-executable statements in a
program.
• An identifier is a user defined name given to a
variable or a constant in a program.
• Process of identifying and removing errors from a
computer program is called debugging.
• Trying to use a variable that has not been assigned
a value gives an error.
• There are several data types in Python — integer,
boolean, float, complex, string, list, tuple, sets,
None and dictionary.
• Operators are constructs that manipulate the value
of operands. Operators may be unary or binary.
• An expression is a combination of values, variables,
and operators.
• Python has input() function for taking user input.
• Python has print() function to output data to a
standard output device.
• The if statement is used for decision making.
• Looping allows sections of code to be executed
repeatedly under some condition.
• for statement can be used to iterate over a range
of values or a sequence.
• The statements within the body of for loop are
executed till the range of values is exhausted.

Exercise
1. Which of the following identifier names are invalid and
why?
a) Serial_no. e) Total_Marks
b) 1st_Room f) total-Marks
c) Hundred$ g) _Percentage
d) Total Marks h) True

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52 Informatics Practices – Class XI

Notes 2. Write the corresponding Python assignment statements:

a) Assign 10 to variable length and 20 to variable
breadth.
b) Assign the average of values of variables length and
breadth to a variable sum.
c) Assign a list containing strings ‘Paper’, ‘Gel Pen’, and
‘Eraser’ to a variable stationery.
d) Assign the strings ‘Mohandas’, ‘Karamchand’, and
‘Gandhi’ to variables first, middle and last.
e) Assign the concatenated value of string variables
first, middle and last to variable fullname. Make sure
to incorporate blank spaces appropriately between
different parts of names.

3. Which data type will be used to represent the following

data values and why?
a) Number of months in a year
b) Resident of Delhi or not
c) Mobile number
d) Pocket money
e) Volume of a sphere
f) Perimeter of a square
g) Name of the student
h) Address of the student

4. Give the output of the following when num1 = 4, num2 =

3, num3 = 2
a) num1 += num2 + num3
b) print (num1)
c) num1 = num1 ** (num2 + num3)
d) print (num1)
e) num1 **= num2 + c
f) num1 = '5' + '5'
g) print(num1)
h) print(4.00/(2.0+2.0))
i) num1 = 2+9*((3*12)-8)/10
j) print(num1)
k) num1 = float(10)
l) print (num1)
m) num1 = int('3.14')

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Brief Overview of Python 53

n) print (num1) Notes

o) print(10 != 9 and 20 >= 20)
p) print(5 % 10 + 10 < 50 and 29 <= 29)

5. Categorise the following as syntax error, logical error or

runtime error:
a) 25 / 0
b) num1 = 25; num2 = 0; num1/num2
6. Write a Python program to calculate the amount payable
if money has been lent on simple interest. Principal or
money lent = P, Rate = R% per annum and Time = T
years. Then Simple Interest (SI) = (P x R x T)/ 100.
Amount payable = Principal + SI.
P, R and T are given as input to the program.

7. Write a program to repeat the string ‘‘GOOD MORNING”

n times. Here n is an integer entered by the user.

8. Write a program to find the average of 3 numbers.

9. Write a program that asks the user to enter one's name

and age. Print out a message addressed to the user that
tells the user the year in which he/she will turn 100
years old.

10. What is the difference between else and elif construct

of if statement?

11. Find the output of the following program segments:

a) for i in range(20,30,2):
print(i)
b) country = 'INDIA'
for i in country:
print (i)
c) i = 0; sum = 0
while i < 9:
if i % 4 == 0:
sum = sum + i
i = i + 2
print (sum)

Case Study Based Question

Schools use “Student Management Information System”
(SMIS) to manage student related data. This system provides
facilities for:

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54 Informatics Practices – Class XI

Notes

• Recording and maintaining personal details of students.

• Maintaining marks scored in assessments and computing
results of students.
• Keeping track of student attendance, and
• Managing many other student-related data in the school.
Let us automate the same step by step.
Identify the personal details of students from your school
identity card and write a program to accept these details for
all students of your school and display them in this format.

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Working with Chapter

Lists and
Dictionaries 4
In this chapter

»» Introduction to List
»» List Operations
“Computer Science is a science of »» Traversing a List
abstraction – creating the right model for »» List Methods and Built-
a problem and devising the appropriate in Functions

mechanizable techniques to solve it.” »» List Manipulation

»» Introduction to
Dictionaries
— A. Aho and J. Ullman »» Traversing a Dictionary
»» Dictionary Methods and
Built-in Functions
»» Manipulating
4.1 Introduction to List Dictionaries
The data type list is an ordered sequence which is
mutable and made up of one or more elements. Unlike a
string which consists of only characters, a list can have
elements of different data types such as integer, float,
string, tuple or even another list. A list is very useful to
group elements of mixed data types. Elements of a list
are enclosed in square brackets and are separated by
comma.
Example 4.1
#list1 is the list of six even numbers
>>> list1 = [2,4,6,8,10,12]
>>> print(list1)
[2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12]

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56 Informatics Practices – Class XI

Notes #list2 is the list of vowels

>>> list2 = ['a','e','i','o','u']
>>> print(list2)
['a', 'e', 'i', 'o', 'u']

#list3 is the list of mixed data types

>>> list3 = [100,23.5,'Hello']
>>> print(list3)
[100, 23.5, 'Hello']

#list4 is the list of lists called nested

#list
>>> list4 =[['Physics',101],['Chemistry',202],
['Mathematics',303]]
>>> print(list4)
[['Physics', 101], ['Chemistry', 202],
['Mathematics', 303]]

4.1.1 Accessing Elements in a List

Each element in list is accessed using value called index.
The fist index value is 0, the second index is 1 and so
on. Elements in the list are assigned index values in
increasing order sterling from 0.
To access an element, use square brackets with
the index [] value of that element. We may also use
negative index value to access elements starting from
the last element in the list, having index value -0.
#initialing a list named list1
>>> list1 = [2,4,6,8,10,12]
>>> list1[0] #returns first element of list1
2
>>> list1[3] #returns fourth element of list1
8
#Out of range index value for the list returns error
>>> list1[15]
IndexError: list index out of range
#an expression resulting in an integer index
>>> list1[1+4]
12
>>> list1[-1] #return first element from right
12
#length of the list1 is assigned to n
>>> n = len(list1)
>>> print(n)
6
#Get the last element of the list1
>>> list1[n-1]
12

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Working with Lists and Dictionaries 57

#Get the first element of list1

>>> list1[-n]
2

4.1.2 Lists are Mutable

In Python, lists are mutable. It means that the contents
of the list can be changed after it has been created.
#List list1 of colors
>>> list1 = ['Red','Green','Blue','Orange']
#change/override the fourth element of list1
>>> list1[3] = 'Black'
>>> list1 #print the modified list list1
['Red', 'Green', 'Blue', 'Black']

4.2 List Operations

The data type list allows manipulation of its contents
through various operations as shown below.
4.2.1 Concatenation
Python allows us to join two or more lists using Concatenation is the
merging of two or
concatenation operator using symbol +. more values. Example:
#list1 is list of first five odd integers we can concatenate
>>> list1 = [1,3,5,7,9] strings together.
#list2 is list of first five even integers
>>> list2 = [2,4,6,8,10]
#Get elements of list1 followed by list2
>>> list1 + list2
[1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 2, 4, 6, 8, 10]
>>> list3 = ['Red','Green','Blue']
>>> list4 = ['Cyan', 'Magenta', 'Yellow'
,'Black']
>>> list3 + list4
['Red','Green','Blue','Cyan','Magenta',
'Yellow','Black']
Note that, there is no change in original lists i.e.,
list1, list2, list3, list4 remain the same after
concatenation operation. If we want to use the result of
two concatenated lists, we should use an assignment
operator.
For example,
#Join list 2 at the end of list
>>> new List = list 1 + list 2
[1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 2, 4, 6, 8, 10]
>> new list The concatenation operator '+’ requires that
the operands should be of list type only. If we try to
concatenate a list with elements of some other data
type, TypeError occurs.

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58 Informatics Practices – Class XI

Notes >>> list1 = [1,2,3]

>>> str1 = "abc"
>>> list1 + str1
TypeError: can only concatenate list (not
"str") to list

4.2.2 Repetition
Python allows us to replicate the contents of a list using
repetition operator depicted by symbol *.
>>> list1 = ['Hello']
#elements of list1 repeated 4 times
>>> list1 * 4
['Hello', 'Hello', 'Hello', 'Hello']

4.2.3 Membership
The membership operator in checks if the element
is present in the list and returns True, else returns
False.
>>> list1 = ['Red','Green','Blue']
>>> 'Green' in list1
True
>>> 'Cyan' in list1
False
The Operator not in transpose returns True if the
element is not present in the list, else it returns False.
>>> list1 = ['Red','Green','Blue']
>>> 'Cyan' not in list1
True
>>> 'Green' not in list1
False

4.2.4 Slicing
Slicing operations allow us to create new list by taking
out elements from an existing list.
>>> list1 =['Red','Green','Blue','Cyan',
'Magenta','Yellow','Black']
#subject from indexes 2 to 5 of list 1
>>> list1[2:6]
['Blue', 'Cyan', 'Magenta', 'Yellow']

#list1 is truncated to the end of the list

>>> list1[2:20] #second index is out of range
['Blue', 'Cyan', 'Magenta', 'Yellow',
'Black']

>>> list1[7:2] #first index > second index
[] #results in an empty list

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Working with Lists and Dictionaries 59

#return sublist from index 0 to 4

>>> list1[:5] #first index missing
['Red','Green','Blue','Cyan','Magenta']

#slicing with a given step size

>>> list1[0:6:2]
['Red','Blue','Magenta']
#negative indexes
#elements at index -6,-5,-4,-3 are sliced
>>> list1[-6:-2]
['Green','Blue','Cyan','Magenta']

#both first and last index missing

>>> list1[::2] #step size 2 on entire list
['Red','Blue','Magenta','Black']

#Access list in the reverse order using

negative step size
>>> list1[::-1]
['Black','Yellow','Magenta','Cyan','Blue',
'Green','Red']

4.3 Traversing a List

We can access each element of the list or traverse a list
using a for loop or a while loop.
(A) List traversal using for loop:
>>> list1 = ['Red','Green','Blue','Yellow',
'Black']
>>> for item in list1:
print(item) len (list1) returns
Output: the length or total
Red number of elements of
Green list1.
range(n) returns a
Blue
sequence of numbers
Yellow starting from 0,
Black increases by 1 and ends
Another way of accessing the elements of the list is at n-1 (one number
less than the specified
using range() and len() functions: number i.e. is)
>>> for i in range(len(list1)):
print(list1[i])
Output:
Red
Green
Blue
Yellow
Black

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60 Informatics Practices – Class XI

4.4 List Methods and Built-in Functions

The data type list has several built-in methods that
are useful in programming. Some of them are listed in
Table 4.1.

Table 4.1 Built-in functions for list manipulation

Method Description Example

len() Returns the length of the list passed as >>> list1 = [10,20,30,40,50]
the argument >>> len(list1)
5

list() Creates an empty list if no argument is >>> list1 = list()

passed >>> list1
[ ]

>>> str1= 'aeiou'

Creates a list if a sequence is passed as >>> list1 = list(str1)
an argument >>> list1
['a', 'e', 'i', 'o', 'u']

append() Appends a single element passed as an >>> list1 = [10,20,30,40]

argument at the end of the list >>> list1.append(50)
>>> list1
A list can also be appended as an ele- [10, 20, 30, 40, 50]
ment to an existing list >>> list1 = [10,20,30,40]
>>> list1.append([50,60])
>>> list1
[10, 20, 30, 40, [50, 60]]

extend() Appends each element of the list passed >>> list1 = [10,20,30]
as argument at the end of the given list >>> list2 = [40,50]
>>> list1.extend(list2)
>>> list1
[10, 20, 30, 40, 50]

insert() Inserts an element at a particular index >>> list1 = [10,20,30,40,50]

in the list #inserts element 25 at index value 2
>>> list1.insert(2,25)
>>> list1
[10, 20, 25, 30, 40, 50]
>>> list1.insert(0,100)
>>> list1
[100, 10, 20, 25, 30, 40, 50]

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Working with Lists and Dictionaries 61

count() Returns the number of times a given >>> list1 = [10,20,30,10,40,10]

element appears in the list >>> list1.count(10)
3
>>> list1.count(90)
0

find() Returns index of the first occurrence of >>> list1 = [10,20,30,20,40,10]

the element in the list. If the element is >>> list1.index(20)
not present, ValueError is generated 1
>>> list1.index(90)
ValueError: 90 is not in list
remove() Removes the given element from the >>> list1 = [10,20,30,40,50,30]
list. If the element is present multi- >>> list1.remove(30)
ple times, only the first occurrence is >>> list1
removed. If the element is not present, [10, 20, 40, 50, 30]
then ValueError is generated >>> list1.remove(90)
ValueError:list.remove(x):x not in
list

pop() Returns the element whose index is >>> list1 = [10,20,30,40,50,60]

passed as argument to this function >>> list1.pop(3)
and also removes it from the list. If no 40
argument is given, then it returns and >>> list1
removes the last element of the list [10, 20, 30, 50, 60]
>>> list1 = [10,20,30,40,50,60]
>>> list1.pop()
60
>>> list1
[10, 20, 30, 40, 50]
reverse() Reverses the order of elements in the >>> list1 = [34,66,12,89,28,99]
given list >>> list1.reverse()
>>> list1
[ 99, 28, 89, 12, 66, 34]

>>> list1 = [ 'Tiger' ,'Zebra' ,

'Lion' , 'Cat' ,'Elephant' ,'Dog']
>>> list1.reverse()
>>> list1
['Dog', 'Elephant', 'Cat', 'Lion',
'Zebra', 'Tiger']
sort() Sorts the elements of the given list in >>>list1 = ['Tiger','Zebra','Lion',
place 'Cat', 'Elephant' ,'Dog']
>>> list1.sort()
>>> list1
['Cat', 'Dog', 'Elephant', 'Lion',
'Tiger', 'Zebra']

>>> list1 = [34,66,12,89,28,99]

>>> list1.sort(reverse = True)
>>>list1
[99,89,66,34,28,12]

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62 Informatics Practices – Class XI

sorted() It takes a list as parameter and creates >>>list1 = [23,45,11,67,85,56]

a new list consisting of the same ele- >>> list2 = sorted(list1)
ments but arranged in ascending order >>> list1
[23, 45, 11, 67, 85, 56]
>>> list2
[11, 23, 45, 56, 67, 85]
min() Returns minimum or smallest element >>> list1 = [34,12,63,39,92,44]
of the list >>> min(list1)
12
max() Returns maximum or largest element of >>> max(list1)
the list 92
sum() Returns sum of the elements of the list >>> sum(list1)
284

4.5 List Manipulation

In this chapter, we have learnt to create a list and the different ways to
manipulate lists. In the following programs, we will apply the various list
manipulation methods.

Program 4-1 Write a program to allow user to perform any those list operation
given in a menu. The menu is:
1. Append an element
2. Insert an element
3. Append a list to the given list
4. Modify an existing element
5. Delete an existing element from its position
6. Delete an existing element with a given value
7. Sort the list in the ascending order
8. Sort the list in descending order
9. Display the list.
#Program 4-1
#Menu driven program to do various list operations
myList = [22,4,16,38,13] #myList having 5 elements
choice = 0
For attempt in range (3): print ("Attempt number:", attempt)
print("The list 'myList' has the following elements", myList)
print("\nL I S T O P E R A T I O N S")
print(" 1. Append an element")
print(" 2. Insert an element at the desired position")
print(" 3. Append a list to the given list")
print(" 4. Modify an existing element")
print(" 5. Delete an existing element by its position")
print(" 6. Delete an existing element by its value")

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Working with Lists and Dictionaries 63

print(" 7. Sort the list in ascending order")

print(" 8. Sort the list in descending order")
print(" 9. Display the list")
choice = int(input("ENTER YOUR CHOICE (1-9): "))

#append element
if choice == 1:
element = eval(input("Enter the element to be appended: "))
myList.append(element)
print("The element has been appended\n")

#insert an element at desired position

elif choice == 2:
element = eval(input("Enter the element to be inserted: "))
pos = int(input("Enter the position:"))
myList.insert(pos,element)
print("The element has been inserted\n")

#append a list to the given list

elif choice == 3:
newList = eval(input("Enter the list to be appended: "))
myList.extend(newList)
print("The list has been appended\n")

#modify an existing element

elif choice == 4:
i = int(input("Enter the position of the element to be
modified: "))
if i < len(myList):
newElement = eval(input("Enter the new element: "))
oldElement = myList[i]
myList[i] = newElement
print("The element",oldElement,"has been modified\n")
else:
print("Position of the element is more then the length
of list")

#delete an existing element by position

elif choice == 5:
i = int(input("Enter the position of the element to be
deleted: "))
if i < len(myList):
element = myList.pop(i)
print("The element",element,"has been deleted\n")
else:
print("\nPosition of the element is more then the length
of list")

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64 Informatics Practices – Class XI

#delete an existing element by value

elif choice == 6:
element = int(input("\nEnter the element to be deleted: "))
if element in myList:
myList.remove(element)
print("\nThe element",element,"has been deleted\n")
else:
print("\nElement",element,"is not present in the list")

#list in sorted order

elif choice == 7:
myList.sort()
print("\nThe list has been sorted")

#list in reverse sorted order

elif choice == 8:
myList.sort(reverse = True)
print("\nThe list has been sorted in reverse order")

#display the list

elif choice == 9:
print("\nThe list is:", myList)
else:
print("Choice is not valid")
Output:
The list 'myList' has the following elements [22, 4, 16, 38, 13]
Attempt number : 1
L I S T O P E R A T I O N S
1. Append an element
2. Insert an element at the desired position
3. Append a list to the given list
4. Modify an existing element
5. Delete an existing element by its position
6. Delete an existing element by its value
7. Sort the list in ascending order
8. Sort the list in descending order
9. Display the list
ENTER YOUR CHOICE (1-10): 8

The list has been sorted in reverse order

The list 'myList' has the following elements [38, 22, 16, 13, 4]
Attempt number : 2
L I S T O P E R A T I O N S
1. Append an element

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Working with Lists and Dictionaries 65

2. Insert an element at the desired position

3. Append a list to the given list
4. Modify an existing element
5. Delete an existing element by its position
6. Delete an existing element by its value
7. Sort the list in ascending order
8. Sort the list in descending order
9. Display the list
ENTER YOUR CHOICE (1-9) 5
Enter the position of the element to be deleted: 2
The element 16 has been deleted

The list 'myList' has the following elements [38, 22, 13, 4]
Attempt number : 3
L I S T O P E R A T I O N S
1. Append an element
2. Insert an element at the desired position
3. Append a list to the given list
4. Modify an existing element
5. Delete an existing element by its position
6. Delete an existing element by its value
7. Sort the list in ascending order
8. Sort the list in descending order
9. Display the list
ENTER YOUR CHOICE (1-9) 10
choice is not valid

Program 4-2 A program to calculate average marks

of n students where n is entered by
the user.
#Program 4-2
#create an empty list
list1 = []
print("How many students marks you want to enter: ")
n = int(input())
for i in range(0,n):
print("Enter marks of student",(i+1),":")
marks = int(input())
#append marks in the list
list1.append(marks)
#initialize total
total = 0
for marks in list1:

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#add marks to total

total = total + marks
average = total / n
print("Average marks of",n,"students is:",average)
Output:
How many students marks you want to enter:
5
Enter marks of student 1:
45
Enter marks of student 2:
89
Enter marks of student 3:
79
Enter marks of student 4:
76
Enter marks of student 5:
55
Average marks of 5 students is: 68.8

Program 4-3 Write a program to check if a number is

present in the list or not. If the number
is present, print the position of the
number. Print an appropriate message if
the number is not present in the list.
#Program 4-3
list1 = [] #Create an empty list
print("How many numbers do you want to enter in the list: ")
maximum = int(input())
print("Enter a list of numbers: ")
for i in range(0,maximum):
n = int(input())
list1.append(n) #append numbers to the list
num = int(input("Enter the number to be searched: "))

position = -1
for i in range (0, lin (list1)
if list1[i] == num: #number is present
position = i+1 #save the position of number
if position == -1 :
print("Number",num,"is not present in the list")
else:
print("Number",num,"is present at",position + 1, "position")
Output:
How many numbers do you want to enter in the list
5

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Working with Lists and Dictionaries 67

Enter a list of numbers:

23
567
12
89
324
Enter the number to be searched:12
Number 12 is present at 3 position

4.6 Introduction to Dictionaries

The data type dictionary falls under mapping. It is a

mapping between a set of keys and a set of values. The
key-value pair is called an item. A key is separated from
its value by a colon(:) and consecutive items are separated
by commas. Items in dictionaries are unordered, so we
may not get back the data in the same order in which
we had entered the data initially in the dictionary.
4.6.1 Creating a Dictionary
To create a dictionary, the items entered are separated
by commas and enclosed in curly braces. Each item is
a key value pair, separated through colon (:). The keys
in the dictionary must be unique and should be of any
immutable data type i.e. number, string or tuple. The
values can be repeated and can be of any data type.
Example 4.2
#dict1 is an empty dictionary
>>> dict1 = {}
>>> dict1
{}
#dict3 is the dictionary that maps names of
#the students to marks in percentage
>>> dict3 = {'Mohan':95,'Ram':89,'Suhel':92,
'Sangeeta':85}
>>> dict3
{'Mohan': 95, 'Ram': 89, 'Suhel': 92,
'Sangeeta': 85}

4.6.2 Accessing Items in a Dictionary

We have already seen that the items of a sequence
(string, list and tuple) are accessed using a technique
called indexing. The items of a dictionary are accessed
via the keys rather than via their relative positions
or indices. Each key serves as the index and maps to
a value.

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Notes The following example shows how a dictionary

returns the value corresponding to the given key:
>>> dict3 = {'Mohan':95,'Ram':89,'Suhel':92,
'Sangeeta':85}
>>> dict3['Ram']
89
>>> dict3['Sangeeta']
85
#using unspecified key
>>> dict3['Shyam']
KeyError: 'Shyam'
In the above examples the key 'Ram' always maps to the
value 89 and key 'Sangeeta' always maps to the value
85. So the order of items does not matter. If the key is not
present in the dictionary we get KeyError.

4.6.3 Membership Operation

The membership operator in checks if the key is present
in the dictionary and returns True, else it returns False.
>>> dict1 = {'Mohan':95,'Ram':89,'Suhel':92,
'Sangeeta':85}
>>> 'Suhel' in dict1
True
The not in operator returns True if the key is not
present in the dictionary, else it returns False.
>>> dict1 = {'Mohan':95,'Ram':89,'Suhel':92,
'Sangeeta':85}
>>> 'Suhel' not in dict1
False

4.6.4 Dictionaries are Mutable

Dictionaries are mutable which implies that the
contents of the dictionary can be changed after it has
been created.
(A) Adding a new item
We can add a new item to the dictionary as shown in
the following example:
>>> dict1 = {'Mohan':95,'Ram':89,'Suhel':92,
'Sangeeta':85}
>>> dict1['Meena'] = 78
>>> dict1
{'Mohan': 95, 'Ram': 89, 'Suhel': 92,
'Sangeeta': 85, 'Meena': 78}

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Working with Lists and Dictionaries 69

(B) Modifying an existing item

The existing dictionary can be modified by just
overwriting the key-value pair. Example to modify a
given item in the dictionary:
>>> dict1 = {'Mohan':95,'Ram':89,'Suhel':92,
'Sangeeta':85}
#Marks of Suhel changed to 93.5
>>> dict1['Suhel'] = 93.5
>>> dict1
{'Mohan': 95, 'Ram': 89, 'Suhel': 93.5,
'Sangeeta': 85}

4.7 Traversing a Dictionary

We can access each item of the dictionary or traverse a
dictionary using for loop.
>>> dict1 = {'Mohan':95,'Ram':89,'Suhel':92,
'Sangeeta':85}
Method 1:
>>> for key in dict1:
print(key,':',dict1[key])
Mohan: 95
Ram: 89
Suhel: 92
Sangeeta: 85
Method 2:
>>> for key,value in dict1.items():
print(key,':',value)
Mohan: 95
Ram: 89
Suhel: 92
Sangeeta: 85

4.8 Dictionary Methods and Built-in Functions

Python provides many functions to work on dictionaries.
Table 4.2 lists some of the commonly used dictionary
methods.
Table 4.2 Built-in functions and methods for dictionary
Method Description Example
len() Returns the length or number of >>> dict1 = {'Mohan':95,'Ram':89,
key: value pairs of the dictionary 'Suhel':92, 'Sangeeta':85}
passed as the argument >>> len(dict1)
4

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dict() Creates a dictionary from a pair1 = [('Mohan',95),('Ram',89),

sequence of key-value pairs ('Suhel',92),('Sangeeta',85)]
>>> pair1
[('Mohan', 95), ('Ram', 89), ('Suhel',
92), ('Sangeeta', 85)]
>>> dict1 = dict(pair1)
>>> dict1
{'Mohan': 95, 'Ram': 89, 'Suhel': 92,
'Sangeeta': 85}

keys() Returns a list of keys in the >>> dict1 = {'Mohan':95, 'Ram':89,

dictionary 'Suhel':92, 'Sangeeta':85}
>>> dict1.keys()
dict_keys(['Mohan', 'Ram', 'Suhel',
'Sangeeta'])

values() Returns a list of values in the >>> dict1 = {'Mohan':95, 'Ram':89,

dictionary 'Suhel':92, 'Sangeeta':85}
>>> dict1.values()
dict_values([95, 89, 92, 85])

items() Returns a list of tuples (key — >>> dict1 = {'Mohan':95, 'Ram':89,

value) pair 'Suhel':92, 'Sangeeta':85}
>>> dict1.items()
dict_items([( 'Mohan', 95), ('Ram', 89),
('Suhel', 92), ('Sangeeta', 85)])

get() Returns the value corresponding >>> dict1 = {'Mohan':95, 'Ram':89,

to the key passed as the argument 'Suhel':92, 'Sangeeta':85}
>>> dict1.get('Sangeeta')
If the key is not present in the 85
dictionary it will return None
>>> dict1.get('Sohan')
>>>
update() appends the key-value pair of >>> dict1 = {'Mohan':95, 'Ram':89,
the dictionary passed as the 'Suhel':92, 'Sangeeta':85}
argument to the key-value pair of >>> dict2 = {'Sohan':79,'Geeta':89}
the given dictionary >>> dict1.update(dict2)
>>> dict1
{'Mohan': 95, 'Ram': 89, 'Suhel': 92,
'Sangeeta': 85, 'Sohan': 79, 'Geeta': 89}
>>> dict2
{'Sohan': 79, 'Geeta': 89}

clear() Deletes or clear all the items of >>> dict1 = {'Mohan':95,'Ram':89,

the dictionary 'Suhel':92, 'Sangeeta':85}
>>> dict1.clear()
>>> dict1
{ }

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Working with Lists and Dictionaries 71

del() Deletes the item with the given >>> dict1 = {'Mohan':95,'Ram':89,
key 'Suhel':92, 'Sangeeta':85}
To delete the dictionary from the >>> del dict1['Ram']
memory we write: >>> dict1
del Dict_name
{'Mohan':95,'Suhel':92, 'Sangeeta': 85}

>>> dict1
NameError: name 'dict1' is not defined

4.9 Manipulating Dictionaries

In this chapter, we have learnt how to create a
dictionary and apply various methods to manipulate it.
The following examples show the application of those
manipulation methods on dictionaries.
(a) Create a dictionary ‘ODD’ of odd numbers between
1 and 10, where the key is the decimal number and
the value is the corresponding number in words.
>>> ODD = {1:'One',3:'Three',5:'Five',7:'Seven',9:'Nine'}
>>> ODD
{1: 'One', 3: 'Three', 5: 'Five', 7: 'Seven', 9: 'Nine'}

(b) Display the keys in dictionary ‘ODD’.

>>> ODD.keys()
dict_keys([1, 3, 5, 7, 9])

(c) Display the values in dictionary ‘ODD’.

>>> ODD.values()
dict_values(['One', 'Three', 'Five', 'Seven', 'Nine'])

(d) Display the items from dictionary ‘ODD’

>>> ODD.items()
dict_items([(1, 'One'), (3, 'Three'), (5, 'Five'), (7, 'Seven'), (9,
'Nine')])

(e) Find the length of the dictionary ‘ODD’.

>>> len(ODD)
5

(f) Check if 7 is present or not in dictionary ‘ODD’

>>> 7 in ODD
True

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(g) Check if 2 is present or not in dictionary ‘ODD’

>>> 2 in ODD
False

(h) Retrieve the value corresponding to the key 9

>>> ODD.get(9)
'Nine'

(i) Delete the item from the dictionary, corresponding to the key 9. ‘ODD’
>>> del ODD[9]
>>> ODD
{1: 'One', 3: 'Three', 5: 'Five', 7: 'Seven'}

Program 4-4 σ n number of write a program to enter

names of employees and their salaries
as input and store them in a dictionary.
Here n is to input by the user.
#Program 4-4
#Program to create a dictionary which stores names of employees
#and their salary
num = int(input("Enter the number of employees whose data to be
stored: "))
count = 1
employee = dict() #create an empty dictionary
for count in range (n):
name = input("Enter the name of the Employee: ")
salary = int(input("Enter the salary: "))
employee[name] = salary
print("\n\nEMPLOYEE_NAME\tSALARY")
for k in employee:
print(k,'\t\t',employee[k])
Output:
Enter the number of employees to be stored: 5
Enter the name of the Employee: 'Tarun'
Enter the salary: 12000
Enter the name of the Employee: 'Amina'
Enter the salary: 34000
Enter the name of the Employee: 'Joseph'
Enter the salary: 24000
Enter the name of the Employee: 'Rahul'
Enter the salary: 30000
Enter the name of the Employee: 'Zoya'
Enter the salary: 25000
EMPLOYEE_NAME SALARY
'Tarun' 12000
'Amina' 34000

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Working with Lists and Dictionaries 73

'Joseph' 24000
'Rahul' 30000
'Zoya' 25000

Program 4-5 Write a program to count the number

of times a character appears in a given
string.
#Program 4-5
#Count the number of times a character appears in a given string
st = input("Enter a string: ")
dic = {} #creates an empty dictionary
for ch in st:
if ch in dic: #if next character is already in dic
dic[ch] += 1
else:
dic[ch] = 1 #if ch appears for the first time

for key in dic:

print(key,':',dic[key])
Output:
Enter a string: HelloWorld
H : 1
e : 1
l : 3
o : 2
W : 1
r : 1
d : 1

Program 4-6 Write a program to convert a number

entered by the user into its corresponding
number in words. for example if the input
is 876 then the output should be ‘Eight
Seven Six’.
# Program 4-6
num = input("Enter any number: ") #number is stored as string
#numberNames is a dictionary of digits and corresponding number
#names
numberNames = {0:'Zero',1:'One',2:'Two',3:'Three',4:'Four',\
5:'Five',6:'Six',7:'Seven',8:'Eight',9:'Nine'}

result = ''
for ch in num:
key = int(ch) #converts character to integer
value = numberNames[key]

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74 Informatics Practices – Class XI

result = result + ' ' + value

print("The number is:",num)
print("The numberName is:",result)
Output:
Enter any number: 6512
The number is: 6512
The numberName is: Six Five One Two

Summary
• Lists are mutable sequences in Python, i.e. we can
change the elements of the list.
• Elements of a list are put in square brackets
separated by comma.
• List indexing is same as that of list and starts at 0.
Two way indexing allows traversing the list in the
forward as well as in the backward direction.
• Operator + concatenates one list to the end of other
list.
• Operator * repeats the content of a list by
specified number of times.
• Membership operator in tells if an element is
present in the list or not and not in does the
opposite.
• Slicing is used to extract a part of the list.
• There are many list manipulation methods. Few
are: len(), list(), append(), extend(), insert(), count(),
find(), remove(), pop(), reverse(), sort(), sorted(),
min(), max(), sum().
• Dictionary is a mapping (non scalar) data type. It
is an unordered collection of key-value pair; key-
value pair are put inside curly braces.
• Each key is separated from its value by a colon.
• Keys are unique and act as the index.
• Keys are of immutable type but values can be
mutable.

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Working with Lists and Dictionaries 75

Notes

Exercise
1. What will be the output of the following statements?

a) list1 = [12,32,65,26,80,10]
list1.sort()
print(list1)
b) list1 = [12,32,65,26,80,10]
sorted(list1)
print(list1)
c) list1 = [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10]
list1[::-2]
list1[:3] + list1[3:]

d) list1 = [1,2,3,4,5]
list1[len(list1)-1]
2. Consider the following list myList. What will be
the elements of myList after each of the following
operations?
myList = [10,20,30,40]
a) myList.append([50,60])
b) myList.extend([80,90])
3. What will be the output of the following code segment?
myList = [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10]
for i in range(0,len(myList)):
if i%2 == 0:
print(myList[i])
4. What will be the output of the following code segment?
a) myList = [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10]
del myList[3:]
print(myList)

b) myList = [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10]
del myList[:5]
print(myList)

c) myList = [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10]
del myList[::2]
print(myList)
5. Differentiate between append() and extend() methods
of list.

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76 Informatics Practices – Class XI

Notes 6. Consider a list:

list1 = [6,7,8,9]
What is the difference between the following
operations on list1:
a) lis t1 * 2
b) lis t1 *= 2
c) lis t1 = lis t1 * 2
7. The record of a student (Name, Roll No, Marks in
five subjects and percentage of marks) is stored in
the following list:
stRecord = ['Raman','A-36',[56,98,99,72,69],
78.8]
Write Python statements to retrieve the following
information from the list stRecord.
a) Percentage of the student
b) Marks in the fifth subject
c) Maximum marks of the student
d) Roll No. of the student
e) Change the name of the student from
‘Raman’ to ‘Raghav’
8. Consider the following dictionary stateCapital:
stateCapital = {"Assam":"Guwahati",
"Bihar":"Patna","Maharashtra":"Mumbai",
"Rajasthan":"Jaipur"}
Find the output of the following statements:
a) print(stateCapital.get("Bihar"))
b) print(stateCapital.keys())
c) print(stateCapital.values())
d) print(stateCapital.items())
e) print(len(stateCapital))
f) print("Maharashtra" in stateCapital)
g) print(stateCapital.get("Assam"))
h) del stateCapital["Assam"]
print(stateCapital)

Programming Problems
1. Write a program to find the number of times an element
occurs in the list.

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Working with Lists and Dictionaries 77

2. Write a program to read a list of n integers (positive Notes

as well as negative). Create two new lists, one having
all positive numbers and the other having all negative
numbers from the given list. Print all three lists.
3. Write a program to find the largest and the second
largest elements in a given list of elements.
4. Write a program to read a list of n integers and find their
median.
Note: The median value of a list of values is the middle one
when they are arranged in order. If there are two middle values
then take their average.
Hint: Use an inbuilt function to sort the list.

5. Write a program to read a list of elements. Modify this

list so that it does not contain any duplicate elements i.e.
all elements occurring multiple times in the list should
appear only once.
6. Write a program to create a list of elements. Input an
element from the user that has to be inserted in the list.
Also input the position at which it is to be inserted.
7. Write a program to read elements of a list and do the
following.
a) The program should ask for the position of the
element to be deleted from the list and delete the
element at the desired position in the list.
b) The program should ask for the value of the element
to be deleted from the list and delete this value from
the list.
8. Write a Python program to find the highest 2 values in
a dictionary.
9. Write a Python program to create a dictionary from a
string ‘w3resource’ such that each individual character
mates a key and its index value for fist occurrence males
the corresponding value in dictionary.
Expected output : {'3': 1, 's': 4, 'r': 2, 'u': 6, 'w': 0, 'c': 8,
'e': 3, 'o': 5}
10. Write a program to input your friend’s, names and their
phone numbers and store them in the dictionary as the
key-value pair. Perform the following operations on the
dictionary:
a) Display the Name and Phone number for all your
friends.
b) Add a new key-value pair in this dictionary and
display the modified dictionary

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78 Informatics Practices – Class XI

Notes c) Delete a particular friend from the dictionary

d) Modify the phone number of an existing friend
e) Check if a friend is present in the dictionary or not
f) Display the dictionary in sorted order of names

Case Study Based Question

For the SMIS System given in Chapter 3, let us do the
following:
1. Write a program to take in the roll number, name and
percentage of marks for n students of Class X and do
the following:
• Accept details of the n students (n is the number
of students).
• Search details of a particular student on the basis
of roll number and display result.
• Display the result of all the students.
• Find the topper amongst them.
• Find the subject toppers amongst them.
(Hint: Use Dictionary, where the key can be roll number
and the value an immutable data type containing name
and percentage.)

Case Study
1. A bank is a financial institution which is involved in
borrowing and lending of money. With advancement
in technology, online banking, also known as internet
banking allows customers of a bank to conduct a range
of financial transactions through the bank’s website
anytime, anywhere. As part of initial investigation you
are suggested to:
• Collect a Bank’s application form. After careful
analysis of the form, identify the information
required for opening a savings account. Also
enquire about the rate of interest offered for a
savings account.
• The basic two operations performed on an account
are Deposit and Withdrawal. Write a menu driven
program that accepts either of the two choices
of Deposit and Withdrawal, then accepts an
amount, performs the transaction and accordingly
displays the balance. Remember every bank has
a requirement of minimum balance which needs
to be taken care of during withdrawal operations.

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Working with Lists and Dictionaries 79

Enquire about the minimum balance required in Notes

your bank.
• Collect the interest rates for opening a fixed
deposit in various slabs in a savings bank
account. Remembers rate may be different for
senior citizens.
Finally, write a menu driven program having the
following options (use functions and appropriate data
types):
• Open a savings bank account
• Deposit money
• Withdraw money
• Take details such as amount and period for a
Fixed Deposit and display its maturity amount for
a particular customer.
2. Participating in a quiz can be fun as it provides a
competitive element. Some educational institutes use
it as a tool to measure knowledge level, abilities and/
or skills of their pupils either on a general level or in
a specific field of study. Identify and analyse popular
quiz shows and write a Python program to create a quiz
that should also contain the following functionalities
besides the one identified by you as a result of
your analysis.
• Create an administrative user ID and password to
categorically add or modify delete a question.
• Register the student before allowing her/him to
play a quiz.
• Allow selection of category based on subject area.
• Display questions as per the chosen category.
• Keep the score as the participant plays.
• Display final score.
3. Our heritage monuments are our assets. They are
a reflection of our rich and glorious past and an
inspiration for our future. UNESCO has identified some
of Indian heritage sites as World Heritage sites. Collect
the following information about these sites:
• What is the name of the site?
• Where is it located?
▪ District
▪ State

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80 Informatics Practices – Class XI

Notes • When was it built?

• Who built it?
• Why was it built?
• Website link (if any)
Write a Python program to:
• Create an administrative user ID and password to
add, modify or delete an entered heritage site in the
list of sites.
• Display the list of world heritage sites in India.
• Search and display information of a world heritage
site entered by the user.
• Display the name(s) of world heritage site(s) on the
basis of the state input by the user.

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Understanding Chapter

Data 5

In this chapter

»» Introduction to Data
»» Data Collection
“Data is not information, Information »» Data Storage

is not knowledge, Knowledge is not »» Data Processing

»» Statistical Techniques
understanding, Understanding is not for Data Processing
wisdom.”
— Gary Schubert

5.1 Introduction to Data

Many a time, people take decisions based on
certain data or information. For example, while
choosing a college for getting admission, one
looks at placement data of previous years of that
college, educational qualification and experience
of the faculty members, laboratory and hostel
facilities, fees, etc. So we can say that identification
of a college is based on various data and their
analysis. Governments systematically collect
and record data about the population through
a process called census. Census data contains

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82 Informatics Practices – Class XI

valuable information which are helpful is planning and

formulating policies. Likewise, the coaching staff of a
sports team analyses previous performances of opponent
teams for making strategies. Banks maintain data about
the customers, their account details and transactions.
All these examples highlight the need of data in various
fields. Data are indeed crucial for decision making.
In the previous examples, one cannot make decisions
by looking at the data itself. In our example of choosing
a college, suppose the placement cell of the college has
maintained data of about 2000 students placed with
different companies at different salary packages in the
last 3 years. Looking at such data, one cannot make
any remark about the placement of students of that
college. The college processes and analyses this data
and the results are given in the placement brochure of
the college through summarisation as well as visuals for
easy understanding. Hence, data need to be gathered,
processed and analysed for making decisions.
A knowledge base is
a store of information In general, data is a collection of characters, numbers,
consisting of facts, and other symbols that represents values of some
assumptions and situations or variables. Data is plural and singular of the
rules which an AI word data is “datum”. Using computers, data are stored
system can use for in electronic forms because data processing becomes
decision making.
faster and easier as compared to manual data processing
done by people. The Information and Communication
Technology (ICT) revolution led by computer, mobile and
Internet has resulted in generation of large volume of
data and at a very fast pace. The following list contains
some examples of data that we often come across.
• Name, age, gender, contact details, etc., of a person
• Transactions data generated through banking,
ticketing, shopping, etc. whether online or offline
• Images, graphics, animations, audio, video
• Documents and web pages
• Online posts, comments and messages
• Signals generated by sensors
• Satellite data including meteorological data,
communication data, earth observation data, etc.

5.1.1 Importance of Data

Human beings rely on data for making decisions.
Besides, large amount of data when processed with the
help of a computer, show us the possibilities or hidden

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Understanding Data 83

traits which are otherwise not visible to humans. When Notes

one withdraws money from ATM, the bank needs to debit
the withdrawn amount from the linked account. So the
bank needs to maintain data and update it as and when
required. The meteorological offices continuously keep
on monitoring satellite data for any upcoming cyclone
or heavy rain.
In a competitive business environment, it is important
for business organisations to continuously monitor and
analyse market behavior with respect to their products
and take actions accordingly. Besides, companies
identify customer demands as well as feedbacks, and
make changes in their products or services accordingly.
The dynamic pricing concept used by airlines and
railway is another example where they decide the price
based on relationships between demand and supply.
The cab booking Apps increase or decrease the price
based on demand for cabs at a particular time. Certain
restaurants offer discounted price (called happy hours),
they decide when and how much discount to offer by
analysing sales data at different time periods.
Besides business, following are some other scenarios
where data are also stored and analysed for making
decisions:
• The electronic voting machines are used for recording
the votes cast. Subsequently, the voting data from
all the machines are accumulated to declare election
results in a short time as compared to manual
counting of ballot papers.
• Scientists record data while doing experiments to
calculate and compare results.
• Pharmaceutical companies record data while trying
out a new medicine to see its effectiveness.
• Libraries maintain data about books in the library
and the membership of the library.
• The search engines give us results after analysing
large volume of data available on the websites across
World Wide Web (www).
• Weather alerts are generated by analysing data
received from various satellites.

5.1.2 Types of Data

As data come from different sources, they can be in
different formats. For example, an image is a collection

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84 Informatics Practices – Class XI

of pixels; a video is made up of frames; a fee slip is

made up of few numeric and non-numeric entries; and
messages/chats are made up of texts, icons (emoticons)
and images/videos. Two broad categories in which data
Activity 5.1 can be classified on the basis of their format are:
Observe Voter Identity (A) Structured Data
cards of your family Data which is organised and can be recorded in a well
members and identify defined format is called structured data. Structured
the data fields under data is usually stored in computer in a tabular (in rows
which data are
organised. Are they
and columns) format where each column represents
same for all? different data for a particular parameter called attribute/
characteristic/variable and each row represents data of
an observation for different attributes. Table 5.1 shows
structured data related to an inventory of kitchen items
maintained by a shop.
Table 5.1 Structured data about kitchen items in a shop
ModelNo ProductName Unit Price Discount(%) Items_in_Inventory
ABC1 Water bottle 126 8 13
ABC2 Melamine Plates 320 5 45
ABC3 Dinner Set 4200 10 8
GH67 Jug 80 0 10
GH78 Table Spoon 120 5 14
GH81 Bucket 190 12 6
NK2 Kitchen Towel 25 0 32

Given this data, using a spreadsheet or other such

software, the shop owner can find out how many total
items are there by summing the column Items_in_
Inventory of Table 5.1 The owner of the shop can also
calculate the total value of all items in the inventory
by multiplying each entry of column 3 (Unit Price) with
corresponding entry of column 5 (Items_in_Inventory)
and finding their sum.
Table 5.2 shows more examples of structured data
recorded for different attributes.
Table 5.2 Attributes maintained for different activities
Entity/Activities Data Fields/Parameters/Attributes
Books at a shop BookTitle, Author, Price, YearofPublication
Depositing fees in a school StudentName, Class, RollNo, FeesAmount, DepositDate
Amount withdrawal from ATM AccHolderName, AccountNo, TypeofAcc, DateofWithdrawal,
AmountWithdrawn, ATMid, TimeOfWithdrawal

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Understanding Data 85

(B) Unstructured Data

A newspaper contains various types of news items
which are also called data. But there is no fixed pattern
that a newspaper follows in placing news articles. One
day there might be three images of different sizes on
a page along with five news items and one or more
advertisements. While on another day there, might be
one big image with three textual news items. So there is
no particular format nor any fixed structure for printing
news. Another example is the content of an email. Think and Reflect
There is no fixed structure about how many lines or When we click a
paragraphs one has to write in an email or how many photograph using
files are to be attached with an email. In summary, our digital or mobile
data which are not in the traditional row and column camera, does it have
some metadata
structure is called unstructured data. associated with it?
Examples of unstructured data include web pages
consisting of text as well as multimedia contents
(image, graphics, audio/video). Other examples include
text documents, business reports, books, audio/video
files, social media messages. Although there are ways
to process unstructured data, we are going to focus on
handling structured data only in this book.
Unstructured data are sometimes described with
the help of some other data called metadata. Metadata
is basically data about data. For example, we describe
different parts of an email as subject, recipient, main
body, attachment, etc. These are the metadata for the
email data. Likewise, we can have some metadata for an
image file as image size (in KB or MB), image type (for
example, JPEG, PNG), image resolution, etc.

5.2 Data Collection

For processing data, we need to collect or gather data
first. We can then store the data in a file or database
for later use. Data collection here means identifying
already available data or collecting from the appropriate
sources. Suppose there are three different scenarios
where sales data in a grocery store are available:
• Sales data are available with the shopkeeper in a
diary or register. In this case we should enter the
data in a digital format for example, in a spreadsheet.
• Data are already available in a digital format, say in
a CSV (comma separated values) file.
• The shopkeeper has so far not recorded any data in
either form but wants to get a software developed for

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86 Informatics Practices – Class XI

maintaining sales data and accounts. The software

Think and Reflect may be developed using a programming language such
Identify attributes as Python which can be used to store and retrieve data
needed for creating an
from a CSV file or a database management system
Aadhaar Card.
like MySQL, which will be discussed further.
Data are continuously being generated at different
sources. Our interactions with digital medium are
continuously generating huge volumes of data. Hospitals
are collecting data about patients for improving their
services. Shopping malls are collecting data about the
items being purchased by people. On analysing such
data, suppose it appears that bedsheets and groceries
are frequently bought together. Hence, the shop owner
may decide to display bedsheets near the grocery section
in the mall to increase the sales. Likewise, a political
analyst may look at the data contained in the posts and
messages at a social media platform and analyse to see
public opinion before an election. Organisations like
World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) are
collecting data related to various economic parameters
from different countries for making economic forecasts.

5.3 Data Storage

Once we gather data and process them to get results, we
may not then simply discard the data. Rather, we would
like to store them for future use as well. Data storage
is the process of storing data on storage devices so that
data can be retrieved later. Now a days large volume of
data are being generated at a very high rate. As a result,
data storage has become a challenging task. However,
the decrease in the cost of digital storage devices has
helped in simplifying this task. There are numerous
digital storage devices available in the market like, Hard
Disk Drive (HDD), Solid State Drive (SSD), CD/DVD,
Tape Drive, Pen Drive, Memory Card, etc.
Think and Reflect We store data like images, documents, audios/
Is it necessary to store videos, etc. as files in our computers. Likewise, school/
data in files before hospital data are stored in data files. We use computers
processing?
to add, modify or delete data in these files or process
these data files to get results. However, file processing
has certain limitations, which can be overcome through
Database Management System (DBMS).

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Understanding Data 87

5.4 Data Processing

We are interested in
understanding data as INFORMATION
RAW DATA Data Processing (In the form
they hold valuable facts (Numbers/
of table/
Text/Image)
and information that chart/text)
can be useful in our
decision making process.
Data Process Cycle
However, by looking at
the vast or large amount Input Processing Output
of data, one cannot arrive
Data Collection Store Reports
at a conclusion. Rather, Data Prepration Retrieve Results
data need to be processed Data Entry Classify Processing System
to get results and after Update
analysing those results,
Figure 5.1: Steps in Data Processing
we make conclusions or
decisions.
We find automated data processing in situations like
online bill payment, registration of complaints, booking
tickets, etc. Figure 5.1 illustrates basic steps used to
process the data to get the output.
Figure 5.2 shows some tasks along with data,
processing and generated output/information.

A website handling online filling of student details for a competitive examination and generating admit card

Student details like name, address, Processing of filled in details for

qualification, marks, mobile correctness of data received,
number, photo and sign, center eligibility as per advertisement or Examination Admit card specifying
choice, online fee payment details not, fees paid or not, photo and roll number, center address, date
like credit/debit card, net banking signature uploaded or not. Then, and time of test.
or other mode of payment, etc. generate a roll number and add this
applicant in the list of eligible
applicants.

A Bank handling withdrawals of cash through ATMs of its own branch

ATM PIN number, account type, Checking for valid PIN number,
account number, card number, existing bank balance, if satisfied, Currency notes, printed slip with
ATM location from where money then deduction of amount from that transaction details
was withdrawn, date and time, and account and counting of rupees and
amount to be withdrawn. initiate printing of receipt

Issue of train ticket

Journey start and end stations, Verify login details and check
date of journey, number of tickets availability of berth in that class. If
required, class of travel payment done, issue tickets and Generate ticket with berth and
(Sleeper/AC/other), berth deduct that number from the total coach number, or issue ticket with
preference (if any), passenger available tickets on that coach. a waiting list number
name(s) and age(s), mobile and Allocate PNR number and berths or
email id, payment related details, generate a waiting number for that
etc. ticket.

Problem Statement Inputs against which Processing Output

data are collected

Figure 5.2: Data Based Problem Statements

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88 Informatics Practices – Class XI

Notes 5.5 Statistical Techniques for Data Processing

Given a set of data values, we need to process them to get
information. There are various techniques which help
us to have preliminary understanding about the data.
Summarisation methods are applied on tabular data
for its easy comprehension. Commonly used statistical
techniques for data summarisation are given below:
5.5.1 Measures of Central Tendency
A measure of central tendency is a single value that
gives us some idea about the data. Three most common
measures of central tendency are the mean, median,
and mode. Instead of looking at each individual data
values, we can calculate the mean, median and mode
of the data to get an idea about average, middle value
and frequency of occurrence of a particular value,
respectively. Selection of a measure of central tendency
depends on certain characteristics of data.
(A) Mean
Mean is simply the average of numeric values of an
attribute. Mean is also called average. Suppose there
are data on weight of 40 students in a class. Instead
of looking at each of the data values, we can calculate
the average to get an idea about the average weight of
students in that class.
Definition: Given n values x1, x2, x3,...xn, mean is
n

computed as ∑ xi .
i
n

Example 5.1
Assume that height (in cm) of students in a class are as
follows [90,102,110,115,85,90,100,110,110]. Mean or
average height of the class is
90 + 102 + 110 + 115 + 85 + 90 + 100 + 110 + 110 912
= = 101.33 cm
9 9

Mean is not a suitable choice if there are outliers

in the data. To calculate mean, the outliers or extreme
values should be removed from the given data and then
calculate mean of the remaining data.
Note: An outlier is an exceptionally large or small value, in
comparison to other values of the data. Usually, outliers are
considered as error since they can influence/affect the average or
other statistical calculation based on the data.

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Understanding Data 89

(B) Median
Median is also computed for a single attribute/variable
at a time. When all the values are sorted in ascending or
descending order, the middle value is called the Median.
When there are odd number of values, then median is
the value at the middle position. If the list has even
number of values, then median is the average of the two
middle values. Median represents the central value at
which the given data is equally divided into two parts.
Example 5.2
Consider the previous data of height of students used
in calculation of mean value. In order to compute the
median, the first step is to sort data in ascending or
descending order. We have sorted the height data in
ascending order as [85,90,90,100,102,110,110,110,
115]. As there are total 9 values (odd number), the Think and Reflect
Out of Mean and Median,
median is the value at position 5, that is 102 cm,
which one is more
whether counted from left to right or from right to left. sensitive to outliers in
Median represents the actual central value at which the data?
given data is equally divided into two parts.
(C) Mode
Value that appears most number of times in the given
data of an attribute/variable is called Mode. It is
computed on the basis of frequency of occurrence of
distinct values in the given data. A data set has no mode
if each value occurs only once. There may be multiple
modes in the data if more than one values have same
highest frequency. Mode can be found for numeric as
well as non-numeric data.
Example 5.3
In the list of height of students, mode is 110 as its
frequency of occurrence in the list is 3, which is larger
than the frequency of rest of the values.
5.5.2 Measures of Variability
The measures of variability refer to the spread or variation
of the values around the mean. They are also called
measures of dispersion that indicate the degree of diversity
in a data set. They also indicate difference within the group.
Two different data sets can have the same mean, median
or mode but completely different levels of dispersion, or
vice versa. Common measures of dispersion or variability
are Range and Standard Deviation.

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90 Informatics Practices – Class XI

Notes (A) Range

It is the difference between maximum and minimum
values of the data (the largest value minus the
smallest value). Range can be calculated only for
numerical data. It is a measure of dispersion and
tells about coverage/spread of data values. For
example difference in salaries of employees, marks of
a student, price of toys, etc. As range is calculated
based on the two extreme values, any outlier in the
data badly influences the result.
Let M be the largest or maximum value and S is the
smallest or minimum value in the data, then Range is
the difference between two extreme values i.e. M – S or
Maximum – Minimum.
Example 5.4
In the above example, minimum hight value is 85 cm
and maximum hight value is 115 cm. Hane range is
115-85 = 30 cm.
(B) Standard deviation
Standard deviation refers to differences within the group
or set of data of a variable. Like Range, it also measures
the spread of data. However, unlike Range which only
uses two extreme values in the data, calculation of
standard deviation considers all the given data. It is
calculated as the positive square root of the average of
squared difference of each value from the mean value
of data. Smaller value of standard deviation means
data are less spread while a larger value of standard
deviation means data are more spread.
Given n values x1, x2, x3,...xn, and their mean x, the
standard deviation, represented as σ (greek letter sigma)
is computed as
n
∑ (X i − X )2
∑= i =1

Example 5.5
Let us compute the standard deviation of the hight
of nine students that we used while calculating
Mean. The Mean (x) was calculated to be 101.33 cm.
Subtract each value from the mean and take square
of that value. Dividing the sum of square values by
total number of values and taking its square not
gives the standard deviation in data. See Table 5.3
for details.

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Understanding Data 91

Table 5.3 Standard deviation of attendance of 9 students

_ _
Height (x) in cm x_x (x _ x )2
90 -11.33 128.37 n

102 0.67 0.36 ∑ (X i − X )2

= i =1

110 8.67 75.17 n

115 13.67 186.87

938
85 -16.33 266.67 = = 104.22
9
90 -11.33 128.37
n
100 -1.33 1.77 ∑ (X i − X )2
110 8.67 75.17 ∑= i =1

n
110 8.67 75.17
n=9 _ _ = 104.22 = 10.2 cm
_ ∑x-x) = 0.03 ∑x-x)2 = 938.00
x =101.33

Let us look at the following problems and select

the suitable statistical technique to be applied (Mean/
Median/Mode/Range/Standard Deviation):
Choose suitable
Problem Statement
statistical method
The management of a company wants to know about disparity in salaries of
all employees.

Teacher wants to know about the average performance of the whole class in
a test.

Compare height of residents of two cities

Find the dominant value from a set of values

Compare income of residents of two cities

Find the popular color for car after surveying the car owners of a small city.

It is important to understand statistical techniques

so that one can decide which statistical technique to
use to arrive at a decision. Different programming tools
are available for efficient analysis of large volumes of
data. These tools make use of statistical techniques for
data analysis. One such programming tool is Python
and it has libraries specially built for data processing
and analysis. We will be covering some of them in the
following chapters.

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92 Informatics Practices – Class XI

Notes Summary
• Data refer to unorganised facts that can be processed
to generate meaningful result or information.
• Data can be structured or unstructured.
• Hard Disk, SSD, CD/DVD, Pen Drive, Memory
Card, etc. are some of the commonly used storage
devices.
• Data Processing cycle involves input and storage
of data, its processing and generating output.
• Summarizing data using statistical techniques aids
in revealing data characteristics.
• Mean, Median, Mode, Range, and Standard
Deviation are some of the statistical techniques
used for data summarisation.
• Mean is the average of given values.
• Median is the mid value when data are sorted in
ascending/descending order.
• Mode is the data value that appears most number
of times.
• Range is the difference between the maximum and
minimum values.
• Standard deviation is the positive square root of
the average of squared difference of each value
from the mean.

Excercise
1. Identify data required to be maintained to perform the
following services:
a) Declare exam results and print e-certificates
b) Register participants in an exhibition and issue
biometric ID cards
c) To search for an image by a search engine
d) To book an OPD appointment with a hospital in a
specific department
2. A school having 500 students wants to identify
beneficiaries of the merit-cum means scholarship,
achieving more than 75% for two consecutive years
and having family income less than 5 lakh per annum.

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Understanding Data 93

Briefly describe data processing steps to be taken by the Notes

to beneficial prepare the list of school.
3. A bank ‘xyz’ wants to know about its popularity among
the residents of a city ‘ABC’ on the basis of number of
bank accounts each family has and the average monthly
account balance of each person. Briefly describe the
steps to be taken for collecting data and what results
can be checked through processing of the collected data.
4. Identify type of data being collected/generated in the
following scenarios:
a) Recording a video
b) Marking attendance by teacher
c) Writing tweets
d) Filling an application form online
5. Consider the temperature (in Celsius) of 7 days of a week
as 34, 34, 27, 28, 27, 34, 34. Identify the appropriate
statistical technique to be used to calculate the following:
a) Find the average temperature.
b) Find the temperature Range of that week.
c) Find the standard deviation temperature.
6. A school teacher wants to analyse results. Identify the
appropriate statistical technique to be used along with
its justification for the following cases:
a) Teacher wants to compare performance in terms of
division secured by students in Class XII A and Class
XII B where each class strength is same.
b) Teacher has conducted five unit tests for that class in
months July to November and wants to compare the
class performance in these five months.
7. Suppose annual day of your school is to be celebrated.
The school has decided to felicitate those parents of the
students studying in classes XI and XII, who are the
alumni of the same school. In this context, answer the
following questions:
a) Which statistical technique should be used to find
out the number of students whose both parents are
alumni of this school?
b) How varied are the age of parents of the students of
that school?
8. For the annual day celebrations, the teacher is looking
for an anchor in a class of 42 students. The teacher would
make selection of an anchor on the basis of singing skill,
writing skill, as well as monitoring skill.
a) Which mode of data collection should be used?
b) How would you represent the skill of students
as data?

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94 Informatics Practices – Class XI

Notes 9. Differentiate between structured and unstructured data

giving one example.
10. The principal of a school wants to do following analysis
on the basis of food items procured and sold in the
canteen:
a) Compare the purchase and sale price of fruit juice
and biscuits.
b) Compare sales of fruit juice, biscuits and samosa.
c) Variation in sale price of fruit juices of different
companies for same quantity (in ml).
Create an appropriate dataset for these items (fruit juice,
biscuits, samosa) by listing their purchase price and
sale price. Apply basic statistical techniques to make
the comparisons.

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Introduction Chapter

to NumPy 6

In this chapter

»» Introduction
»» Array
»» NumPy Array
“The goal is to turn data into information, »» Indexing and Slicing
and information into insight.” »» Operations on Arrays
»» Concatenating Arrays
— Carly Fiorina »» Reshaping Arrays
»» Splitting Arrays
»» Statistical Operations
on Arrays
»» Loading Arrays from
Files
»» Saving NumPy Arrays
6.1 Introduction in Files on Disk
NumPy stands for ‘Numerical Python’. It is a
package for data analysis and scientific computing
with Python. NumPy uses a multidimensional
array object, and has functions and tools
for working with these arrays. The powerful
n-dimensional array in NumPy speeds-up data
processing. NumPy can be easily interfaced with
other Python packages and provides tools for
integrating with other programming languages
like C, C++ etc.

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96 Informatics Practices – Class XI

Installing NumPy
NumPy can be installed by typing following command:
pip install NumPy

6.2 Array
We have learnt about various data types like list, tuple,
Contiguous memory and dictionary. In this chapter we will discuss another
allocation:
datatype ‘Array’. An array is a data type used to store
The memory space
must be divided multiple values using a single identifier (variable name).
into the fined sized An array contains an ordered collection of data elements
position and each where each element is of the same type and can be
position is allocated referenced by its index (position).
to a single data only.
The important characteristics of an array are:
Now Contiguous
Memory Allocation: • Each element of the array is of same data
Divide the data into type, though the values stored in them may be
several blocks and different.
place in different
parts of the memory
• The entire array is stored contiguously in
according to the memory. This makes operations on array fast.
availability of memory • Each element of the array is identified or
space. referred using the name of the Array along with
the index of that element, which is unique for
each element. The index of an element is an
integral value associated with the element,
based on the element’s position in the array.
For example consider an array with 5 numbers:
[ 10, 9, 99, 71, 90 ]
Here, the 1st value in the array is 10 and has the
index value [0] associated with it; the 2nd value in the
array is 9 and has the index value [1] associated with
it, and so on. The last value (in this case the 5th value)
in this array has an index [4]. This is called zero based
indexing. This is very similar to the indexing of lists in
Python. The idea of arrays is so important that almost
all programming languages support it in one form or
another.

6.3 NumPy Array

NumPy arrays are used to store lists of numerical data,
vectors and matrices. The NumPy library has a large set of
routines (built-in functions) for creating, manipulating,
and transforming NumPy arrays. Python language also
has an array data structure, but it is not as versatile,
efficient and useful as the NumPy array. The NumPy

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Introduction to NumPy 97

array is officially called ndarray but commonly known

as array. In rest of the chapter, we will be referring to
NumPy array whenever we use “array”. following are few
differences between list and Array.
6.3.1 Difference Between List and Array
List Array
List can have elements of different data All elements of an array are of same data type for
types for example, [1,3.4, ‘hello’, ‘a@’] example, an array of floats may be: [1.2, 5.4, 2.7]
Elements of a list are not stored Array elements are stored in contiguous memory
contiguously in memory. locations. This makes operations on arrays faster than
lists.
Lists do not support element wise operations, Arrays support element wise operations. For example,
for example, addition, multiplication, etc. if A1 is an array, it is possible to say A1/3 to divide
because elements may not be of same type. each element of the array by 3.
Lists can contain objects of different NumPy array takes up less space in memory as
datatype that Python must store the type compared to a list because arrays do not require to
information for every element along with its store datatype of each element separately.
element value. Thus lists take more space
in memory and are less efficient.
List is a part of core Python. Array (ndarray) is a part of NumPy library.

6.3.2 Creation of NumPy Arrays from List

There are several ways to create arrays. To create an
array and to use its methods, first we need to import the
NumPy library.
#NumPy is loaded as np (we can assign any
#name), numpy must be written in lowercase
>>> import numpy as np
The NumPy’s array() function converts a given list
into an array. For example,
#Create an array called array1 from the
#given list.
>>> array1 = np.array([10,20,30])

#Display the contents of the array

>>> array1
array([10, 20, 30])

• Creating a 1-D Array

An array with only single row of elements is called
1-D array. Let us try to create a 1-D array from
a list which contains numbers as well as strings.
>>> array2 = np.array([5,-7.4,'a',7.2])
>>> array2

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98 Informatics Practices – Class XI

array(['5', '-7.4', 'a', '7.2'],

dtype='<U32')
A common mistake
occurs while passing Observe that since there is a string value in the
argument to array() if list, all integer and float values have been promoted to
we forget to put square string, while converting the list to array.
brackets. Make sure
only a single argument Note: U32 means Unicode-32 data type.
containing list of • Creating a 2-D Array
values is passed.
#incorrect way We can create a two dimensional (2-D) arrays by
>>> a = passing nested lists to the array() function.
np.array(1,2,3,4)
#correct way Example 6.1
>>> a =
np.array([1,2,3,4]) >>> array3 = np.array([[2.4,3],
[4.91,7],[0,-1]])
>>> array3
array([[ 2.4 , 3. ],
[ 4.91, 7. ],
[ 0. , -1. ]])
Observe that the integers 3, 7, 0 and -1 have been
promoted to floats.
6.3.3 Attributes of NumPy Array
Some important attributes of a NumPy ndarray object are:
i) ndarray.ndim: gives the number of dimensions
of the array as an integer value. Arrays can be
1-D, 2-D or n-D. In this chapter, we shall focus
on 1-D and 2-D arrays only. NumPy calls the
dimensions as axes (plural of axis). Thus, a 2-D
array has two axes. The row-axis is called axis-0
A list is called nested
list when each and the column-axis is called axis-1. The number
element is a list itself. of axes is also called the array’s rank.
Example 6.2
>>> array1.ndim
1
>>> array3.ndim
2
ii) ndarray.shape: It gives the sequence of integers
indicating the size of the array for each dimension.
Example 6.3
# array1 is 1D-array, there is nothing
# after , in sequence
>>> array1.shape
(3,)
>>> array2.shape
(4,)
>>> array3.shape
(3, 2)

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Introduction to NumPy 99

The output (3, 2) means array3 has 3 rows and 2 Notes

columns.
iii) ndarray.size: It gives the total number of
elements of the array. This is equal to the product
of the elements of shape.
Example 6.4
>>> array1.size
3
>>> array3.size
6
iv) ndarray.dtype: is the data type of the elements
of the array. All the elements of an array are of
same data type. Common data types are int32,
int64, float32, float64, U32, etc.
Example 6.5
>>> array1.dtype
dtype('int32')
>>> array2.dtype
dtype('<U32>')
>>> array3.dtype
dtype('float64')
v) ndarray.itemsize: It specifies the size in bytes
of each element of the array. Data type int32 and
float32 means each element of the array occupies
32 bits in memory. 8 bits form a byte. Thus, an
array of elements of type int32 has itemsize 32/8=4
bytes. Likewise, int64/float64 means each item
has itemsize 64/8=8 bytes.
Example 6.6
>>> array1.itemsize
4 # memory allocated to integer
>>> array2.itemsize
128 # memory allocated to string
>>> array3.itemsize
8 #memory allocated to float type

6.3.4 Other Ways of Creating NumPy Arrays

1. We can specify data type (integer, float, etc.) while
creating array using dtype as an argument to
array(). This will convert the data automatically
to the mentioned type. In the following example,
nested list of integers are passed to the array
function. Since data type has been declared
as float, the integers are converted to floating
point numbers.

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100 Informatics Practices – Class XI

>>> array4 = np.array( [ [1,2], [3,4] ],

dtype=float)
>>> array4
array([[1., 2.],
[3., 4.]])
2. We can create an array with all elements initialised
to 0 using the function zeros(). By default, the
data type of the array created by zeros() is float.
The following code will create an array with 3 rows
and 4 columns with each element set to 0.
>>> array5 = np.zeros((3,4))
>>> array5
array([[0., 0., 0., 0.],
[0., 0., 0., 0.],
[0., 0., 0., 0.]])
3. We can create an array with all elements initialised
to 1 using the function ones(). By default, the
data type of the array created by ones() is float.
The following code will create an array with 3 rows
and 2 columns.
>>> array6 = np.ones((3,2))
>>> array6
array([[1., 1.],
[1., 1.],
[1., 1.]])
4. We can create an array with numbers in a given
range and sequence using the arange() function.
This function is analogous to the range() function
of Python.
>>> array7 = np.arange(6)
# an array of 6 elements is created with
start value 5 and step size 1
>>> array7
array([0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5])
# Creating an array with start value -2, end
# value 24 and step size 4
>>> array8 = np.arange( -2, 24, 4 )
>>> array8
array([-2, 2, 6, 10, 14, 18, 22])

6.4 Indexing and Slicing

Think and Reflect NumPy arrays can be indexed, sliced and iterated over.
When we may require
6.4.1 Indexing
to create an array
initialised to zeros or We have learnt about indexing single-dimensional
ones? array in section 6.2. For 2-D arrays indexing for both
dimensions starts from 0, and each element is referenced
through two indexes i and j, where i represents the row
number and j represents the column number.

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Introduction to NumPy 101

Table 6.1 Marks of students in different subjects Notes

Name Maths English Science
Ramesh 78 67 56

Vedika 76 75 47

Harun 84 59 60

Prasad 67 72 54

Consider Table 6.1 showing marks obtained by

students in three different subjects. Let us create an
array called marks to store marks given in three subjects
for four students given in this table. As there are 4
students (i.e. 4 rows) and 3 subjects (i.e. 3 columns),
the array will be called marks[4][3]. This array can
store 4*3 = 12 elements.
Here, marks[i,j] refers to the element at (i+1)th row
and (j+1)th column because the index values start at 0.
Thus marks[3,1] is the element in 4th row and second
column which is 72 (marks of Prasad in English).
# accesses the element in the 1st row in
# the 3rd column
>>> marks[0,2]
56
>>> marks [0,4]
index Out of Bound "Index Error". Index 4
is out of bounds for axis with size 3

6.4.2 Slicing
Sometimes we need to extract part of an array. This is
done through slicing. We can define which part of the
array to be sliced by specifying the start and end index
values using [start : end] along with the array name.
Example 6.7
>>> array8
array([-2, 2, 6, 10, 14, 18, 22])

# excludes the value at the end index

>>> array8[3:5]
array([10, 14])

# reverse the array

>>> array8[ : : -1]
array([22, 18, 14, 10, 6, 2, -2])

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102 Informatics Practices – Class XI

Notes Now let us see how slicing is done for 2-D arrays.
For this, let us create a 2-D array called array9 having
3 rows and 4 columns.
>>> array9 = np.array([[ -7, 0, 10, 20],
[ -5, 1, 40, 200],
[ -1, 1, 4, 30]])

# access all the elements in the 3rd column

>>> array9[0:3,2]
array([10, 40, 4])

Note that we are specifying rows in the range 0:3

because the end value of the range is excluded.
# access elements of 2nd and 3rd row from 1st
# and 2nd column
>>> array9[1:3,0:2]
array([[-5, 1],
[-1, 1]])
If row indices are not specified, it means all the rows
are to be considered. Likewise, if column indices are
not specified, all the columns are to be considered.
Thus, the statement to access all the elements in the 3rd
column can also be written as:
>>>array9[:,2]
array([10, 40, 4])

6.5 Operations on Arrays

Once arrays are declared, we con access it's element
or perform certain operations the last section, we
learnt about accessing elements. This section describes
multiple operations that can be applied on arrays.
6.5.1 Arithmetic Operations
Arithmetic operations on NumPy arrays are fast and
simple. When we perform a basic arithmetic operation
like addition, subtraction, multiplication, division etc. on
two arrays, the operation is done on each corresponding
pair of elements. For instance, adding two arrays will
result in the first element in the first array to be added
to the first element in the second array, and so on.
Consider the following element-wise operations on two
arrays:
>>> array1 = np.array([[3,6],[4,2]])
>>> array2 = np.array([[10,20],[15,12]])

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Introduction to NumPy 103

#Element-wise addition of two matrices. Notes

>>> array1 + array2
array([[13, 26],
[19, 14]])

#Subtraction
>>> array1 - array2
array([[ -7, -14],
[-11, -10]])

#Multiplication
>>> array1 * array2
array([[ 30, 120],
[ 60, 24]])

#Matrix Multiplication
>>> array1 @ array2
array([[120, 132],
[ 70, 104]])

#Exponentiation
>>> array1 ** 3
array([[ 27, 216],
[ 64, 8]], dtype=int32)

#Division
>>> array2 / array1
array([[3.33333333, 3.33333333],
[3.75 , 6. ]])

#Element wise Remainder of Division

#(Modulo)
>>> array2 % array1
array([[1, 2],
[3, 0]], dtype=int32)
It is important to note that for element-wise
operations, size of both arrays must be same. That is,
array1.shape must be equal to array2.shape.
6.5.2 Transpose
Transposing an array turns its rows into columns and
columns into rows just like matrices in mathematics.
#Transpose
>>> array3 = np.array([[10,-7,0, 20],
[-5,1,200,40],[30,1,-1,4]])
>>> array3
array([[ 10, -7, 0, 20],
[ -5, 1, 200, 40],
[ 30, 1, -1, 4]])

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Notes # the original array does not change

>>> array3.transpose()
array([[ 10, -5, 30],
[ -7, 1, 1],
[ 0, 200, -1],
[ 20, 40, 4]])

6.5.3 Sorting
Sorting is to arrange the elements of an array in
hierarchical order either ascending or descending. By
default, numpy does sorting in ascending order.
>>> array4 = np.array([1,0,2,-3,6,8,4,7])
>>> array4.sort()
>>> array4
array([-3, 0, 1, 2, 4, 6, 7, 8])
In 2-D array, sorting can be done along either of the
axes i.e., row-wise or column-wise. By default, sorting
is done row-wise (i.e., on axis = 1). It means to arrange
elements in each row in ascending order. When axis=0,
sorting is done column-wise, which means each column
is sorted in ascending order.
>>> array4 = np.array([[10,-7,0, 20],
[-5,1,200,40],[30,1,-1,4]])
>>> array4
array([[ 10, -7, 0, 20],
[ -5, 1, 200, 40],
[ 30, 1, -1, 4]])

#default is row-wise sorting

>>> array4.sort()
>>> array4
array([[ -7, 0, 10, 20],
[ -5, 1, 40, 200],
[ -1, 1, 4, 30]])
>>> array5 = np.array([[10,-7,0, 20],
[-5,1,200,40],[30,1,-1,4]])

#axis =0 means column-wise sorting

>>> array5.sort(axis=0)
>>> array5
array([[ -5, -7, -1, 4],
[ 10, 1, 0, 20],
[ 30, 1, 200, 40]])

6.6 Concatenating Arrays

Concatenation means joining two or more arrays.
Concatenating 1-D arrays means appending the
sequences one after another. NumPy.concatenate()

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Introduction to NumPy 105

function can be used to concatenate two or more Notes

2-D arrays either row-wise or column-wise. All the
dimensions of the arrays to be concatenated must match
exactly except for the dimension or axis along which
they need to be joined. Any mismatch in the dimensions
results in an error. By default, the concatenation of the
arrays happens along axis=0.
Example 6.8
>>> array1 = np.array([[10, 20], [-30,40]])
>>> array2 = np.zeros((2, 3), dtype=array1.
dtype)

>>> array1
array([[ 10, 20],
[-30, 40]])

>>> array2
array([[0, 0, 0],
[0, 0, 0]])

>>> array1.shape
(2, 2)
>>> array2.shape
(2, 3)

>>> np.concatenate((array1,array2), axis=1)

array([[ 10, 20, 0, 0, 0],
[-30, 40, 0, 0, 0]])

>>> np.concatenate((array1,array2), axis=0)

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<pyshell#3>", line 1, in <module>
np.concatenate((array1,array2))
ValueError: all the input array dimensions
except for the concatenation axis must
match exactly

6.7 Reshaping Arrays

We can modify the shape of an array using the reshape()
function. Reshaping an array cannot be used to change
the total number of elements in the array. Attempting
to change the number of elements in the array using
reshape() results in an error.
Example 6.9
>>> array3 = np.arange(10,22)
>>> array3
array([10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18,
19, 20, 21])

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106 Informatics Practices – Class XI

Notes >>> array3.reshape(3,4)

array([[10, 11, 12, 13],
[14, 15, 16, 17],
[18, 19, 20, 21]])

>>> array3.reshape(2,6)
array([[10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15],
[16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21]])

6.8 Splitting Arrays

We can split an array into two or more subarrays.
numpy.split() splits an array along the specified axis.
We can either specify sequence of index values where an
array is to be split; or we can specify an integer N, that
indicates the number of equal parts in which the array
is to be split, as parameter(s) to the NumPy.split()
function. By default, NumPy.split() splits along axis =
0. Consider the array given below:
>>> array4
array([[ 10, -7, 0, 20],
[ -5, 1, 200, 40],
[ 30, 1, -1, 4],
[ 1, 2, 0, 4],
[ 0, 1, 0, 2]])

# [1,3] indicate the row indices on which

# to split the array
>>> first, second, third = numpy split(array4,
[1, 3])

# array4 is split on the first row and

# stored on the sub-array first
>>> first
array([[10, -7, 0, 20]])

# array4 is split after the first row and

# upto the third row and stored on the
# sub-array second
>>> second
array([[ -5, 1, 200, 40],
[ 30, 1, -1, 4]])

# the remaining rows of array4 are stored

# on the sub-array third
>>> third
array([[1, 2, 0, 4],
[0, 1, 0, 2]])

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Introduction to NumPy 107

#[1, 2], axis=1 give the columns indices Notes

#along which to split
>>> firstc, secondc, thirdc =numpy split(array4,
[1, 2], axis=1)
>>> firstc
array([[10],
[-5],
[30],
[ 1],
[ 0]])

>>> secondc
array([[-7],
[ 1],
[ 1],
[ 2],
[ 1]])

>>> thirdc
array([[ 0, 20],
[200, 40],
[ -1, 4],
[ 0, 4],
[ 0, 2]])

# 2nd parameter 2 implies array is to be

# split in 2 equal parts axis=1 along the
# column axis
>>> firsthalf, secondhalf =np.split(array4,2,
axis=1)
>>> firsthalf
array([[10, -7],
[-5, 1],
[30, 1],
[ 1, 2],
[ 0, 1]])

>>> secondhalf
array([[ 0, 20],
[200, 40],
[ -1, 4],
[ 0, 4],
[ 0, 2]])

6.9 Statistical Operations on Arrays

NumPy provides functions to perform many useful
statistical operations on arrays. In this section, we will
apply the basic statistical techniques called descriptive
statistics that we have learnt in chapter 5.

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108 Informatics Practices – Class XI

Notes Let us consider two arrays:

>>> arrayA = np.array([1,0,2,-3,6,8,4,7])
>>> arrayB = np.array([[3,6],[4,2]])
1. The max() function finds the maximum element
from an array.
# max element form the whole 1-D array
>>> arrayA.max()
8
# max element form the whole 2-D array
>>> arrayB.max()
6
# if axis=1, it gives column wise maximum
>>> arrayB.max(axis=1)
array([6, 4])
# if axis=0, it gives row wise maximum
>>> arrayB.max(axis=0)
array([4, 6])
2. The min() function finds the minimum element
from an array.
>>> arrayA.min()
-3
>>> arrayB.min()
2
>>> arrayB.min(axis=0)
array([3, 2])
3. The sum() function finds the sum of all elements
of an array.
>>> arrayA.sum()
25
>>> arrayB.sum()
15
#axis is used to specify the dimension
#on which sum is to be made. Here axis = 1
#means the sum of elements on the first row
>>> arrayB.sum(axis=1)
array([9, 6])
4. The mean() function finds the average of elements
of the array.
>>> arrayA.mean()
3.125
>>> arrayB.mean()
3.75
>>> arrayB.mean(axis=0)
array([3.5, 4. ])
>>> arrayB.mean(axis=1)
array([4.5, 3. ])
5. The std() function is used to find standard
deviation of an array of elements.
>>> arrayA.std()
3.550968177835448

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Introduction to NumPy 109

>>> arrayB.std() Notes

1.479019945774904

>>> arrayB.std(axis=0)
array([0.5, 2. ])

>>> arrayB.std(axis=1)
array([1.5, 1. ])

6.10 Loading Arrays from Files

Sometimes, we may have data in files and we may need
to load that data in an array for processing. numpy.
loadtxt() and numpy.genfromtxt()are the two
functions that can be used to load data from text files.
The most commonly used file type to handle large amount
of data is called CSV (Comma Separated Values).
Each row in the text file must have the same number
of values in order to load data from a text file into a
numpy array. Let us say we have the following data in a
text file named data.txt stored in the folder C:/NCERT.

RollNo Marks1 Marks2 Marks3

1, 36, 18, 57
2, 22, 23, 45
3, 43, 51, 37
4, 41, 40, 60
5, 13, 18, 37
We can load the data from the data.txt file into an
array say, studentdata in the following manner:
6.10.1 Using NumPy.loadtxt()
>>> studentdata = np.loadtxt('C:/NCERT/
data.txt', skiprows=1, delimiter=',',
dtype = int)

>>> studentdata
array([[ 1, 36, 18, 57],
[ 2, 22, 23, 45],
[ 3, 43, 51, 37],
[ 4, 41, 40, 60],
[ 5, 13, 18, 27]])
In the above statement, first we specify the name
and path of the text file containing the data. Let us
understand some of the parameters that we pass in the
np.loadtext() function:

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• The parameter skiprows=1 indicates that the

first row is the header row and therefore we
need to skip it as we do not want to load it in
the array.
• The delimiter specifies whether the values are
separated by comma, semicolon, tab or space
(the four are together called whitespace), or any
other character. The default value for delimiter
is space.
• We can also specify the data type of the array
to be created by specifying through the dtype
argument. By default, dtype is float.
We can load each row or column of the data file into
different numpy arrays using the unpack parameter.
By default, unpack=False means we can extract each
row of data as separate arrays. When unpack=True, the
returned array is transposed means we can extract the
columns as separate arrays.
# To import data into multiple NumPy arrays
# row wise. Values related to student1 in
# array stud1, student2 in array stud2 etc.
>>> stud1, stud2, stud3, stud4, stud5 =
np.loadtxt('C:/NCERT/data.txt',skiprows=1,
.CSV files or comma delimiter=',', dtype = int)
separated values
files are a type of text >>> stud1
files that have values array([ 1, 36, 18, 57])
separated by commas. >>> stud2
A CSV file stores array([ 2, 22, 23, 45]) # and so on
tabular data in a text
file. CSV files can # Import data into multiple arrays column
be loaded in NumPy # wise. Data in column RollNo will be put
arrays and their data # in array rollno, data in column Marks1
can be analyzed using # will be put in array mks1 and so on.
these functions. >>> rollno, mks1, mks2, mks3 =
np.loadtxt('C:/NCERT/data.txt',
skiprows=1, delimiter=',', unpack=True,
dtype = int)
>>> rollno
array([1, 2, 3, 4, 5])

>>> mks1
array([36, 22, 43, 41, 13])

>>> mks2
array([18, 23, 51, 40, 18])

>>> mks3
array([57, 45, 37, 60, 27])

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Introduction to NumPy 111

6.10.2 Using NumPy.genfromtxt()

genfromtxt() is another function in NumPy to load data
from files. As compared to loadtxt(), genfromtxt() Activity 6.1
can also handle missing values in the data file. Let us
Can you write the
look at the following file dataMissing.txt with some command to load the
missing values and some non-numeric data: data.txt including the
header row as well?
RollNo Marks1 Marks2 Marks3
1, 36, 18, 57
2, ab, 23, 45
3, 43, 51,
4, 41, 40, 60
5, 13, 18, 27

>>> dataarray = np.genfromtxt('C:/NCERT/

dataMissing.txt',skip_header=1,
delimiter = ',')

>>> dataarray
array([[ 1., 36., 18., 57.],
[ 2., nan, 23., 45.],
[ 3., 43., 51., nan],
[ 4., 41., 40., 60.],
[ 5., 13., 18., 27.]])
The genfromtxt() function converts missing values
and character strings in numeric columns to nan. But if
we specify dtype as int, it converts the missing or other
non numeric values to -1. We can also convert these
missing values and character strings in the data files
to some specific value using the parameter filling_
values.
Example 6.10 Let us set the value of the missing or non
numeric data to -999:
Activity 6.2
>>> dataarray = np.genfromtxt('C:/NCERT/
Can you create a
dataMissing.txt',skip_header=1,
datafile and import
delimiter=',', filling_values=-999, data into multiple
dtype = int) NumPy arrays column
wise? (Hint: use unpack
>>> dataarray parameter)
array([[ 1, 36, 18, 57],
[ 2, -999, 23, 45],
[ 3, 43, 51, -999],
[ 4, 41, 40, 60],
[ 5, 13, 18, 27]])

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112 Informatics Practices – Class XI

Notes 6.11 Saving NumPy Arrays in Files on Disk

The savetxt() function is used to save a NumPy array
to a text file.
Example 6.11
>>> np.savetxt('C:/NCERT/testout.txt',
studentdata, delimiter=',', fmt='%i')
Note: We have used parameter fmt to specify the format in
which data are to be saved. The default is float.

Summary
• Array is a data type that holds objects of same
datatype (numeric, textual, etc.). The elements of
an array are stored contiguously in memory. Each
element of an array has an index or position value.
• NumPy is a Python library for scientific computing
which stores data in a powerful n-dimensional
ndarray object for faster calculations.
• Each element of an array is referenced by the array
name along with the index of that element.
• numpy.array() is a function that returns an object
of type numpy.ndarray.
• All arithmetic operations can be performed on
arrays when shape of the two arrays is same.
• NumPy arrays are not expandable or extendable.
Once a numpy array is defined, the space it occupies
in memory is fixed and cannot be changed.
• numpy.split() slices apart an array into multiple
sub-arrays along an axis.
• numpy.concatenate() function can be used to
concatenate arrays.
• numpy.loadtxt() and numpy.genfromtxt() are
functions used to load data from files. The savetxt()
function is used to save a NumPy array to a
text file.

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Introduction to NumPy 113

Notes

Exercise
1. What is NumPy ? How to install it?
2. What is an array and how is it different from a list? What
is the name of the built-in array class in NumPy ?
3. What do you understand by rank of an ndarray?
4. Create the following NumPy arrays:
a) A 1-D array called zeros having 10 elements and
all the elements are set to zero.
b) A 1-D array called vowels having the elements ‘a’,
‘e’, ‘i’, ‘o’ and ‘u’.
c) A 2-D array called ones having 2 rows and 5
columns and all the elements are set to 1 and
dtype as int.
d) Use nested Python lists to create a 2-D array called
myarray1 having 3 rows and 3 columns and store
the following data:
2.7, -2, -19
0, 3.4, 99.9
10.6, 0, 13
e) A 2-D array called myarray2 using arange()
having 3 rows and 5 columns with start value = 4,
step size 4 and dtype as float.
5. Using the arrays created in Question 4 above, write
NumPy commands for the following:
a) Find the dimensions, shape, size, data type of the
items and itemsize of arrays zeros, vowels,
ones, myarray1 and myarray2.
b) Reshape the array ones to have all the 10 elements
in a single row.
c) Display the 2nd and 3rd element of the array vowels.
d) Display all elements in the 2nd and 3rd row of the
array myarray1.
e) Display the elements in the 1st and 2nd column of
the array myarray1.
f) Display the elements in the 1st column of the 2nd
and 3rd row of the array myarray1.
g) Reverse the array of vowels.
6. Using the arrays created in Question 4 above, write
NumPy commands for the following:

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114 Informatics Practices – Class XI

Notes a) Divide all elements of array ones by 3.

b) Add the arrays myarray1 and myarray2.
c) Subtract myarray1 from myarray2 and store the
result in a new array.
d) Multiply myarray1 and myarray2 elementwise.
e) Do the matrix multiplication of myarray1 and
myarray2 and store the result in a new array
myarray3.
f) Divide myarray1 by myarray2.
g) Find the cube of all elements of myarray1 and
divide the resulting array by 2.
h) Find the square root of all elements of myarray2
and divide the resulting array by 2. The result
should be rounded to two places of decimals.
7. Using the arrays created in Question 4 above, write
NumPy commands for the following:
a) Find the transpose of ones and myarray2.
b) Sort the array vowels in reverse.
c) Sort the array myarray1 such that it brings the
lowest value of the column in the first row and so
on.
8. Using the arrays created in Question 4 above, write
NumPy commands for the following:
a) Use NumPy. split() to split the array myarray2
into 5 arrays columnwise. Store your resulting
arrays in myarray2A, myarray2B, myarray2C,
myarray2D and myarray2E. Print the arrays
myarray2A, myarray2B, myarray2C, myarray2D
and myarray2E.
b) Split the array zeros at array index 2, 5, 7, 8 and
store the resulting arrays in zerosA, zerosB,
zerosC and zerosD and print them.
c) Concatenate the arrays myarray2A, myarray2B
and myarray2C into an array having 3 rows and 3
columns.
9. Create a 2-D array called myarray4 using arange()
having 14 rows and 3 columns with start value = -1,
step size 0.25 having. Split this array row wise into 3
equal parts and print the result.
10. Using the myarray4 created in the above questions,
write commands for the following:
a) Find the sum of all elements.
b) Find the sum of all elements row wise.

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Introduction to NumPy 115

c) Find the sum of all elements column wise. Notes

d) Find the max of all elements.
e) Find the min of all elements in each row.
f) Find the mean of all elements in each row.
g) Find the standard deviation column wise.

Case Study (Solved)

We have already learnt that a data set (or dataset) is a
collection of data. Usually a data set corresponds to the
contents of a database table, or a statistical data matrix,
where every column of the table represents a particular
variable, and each row corresponds to a member or an item
etc. A data set lists values for each of the variables, such as
height and weight of a student, for each row (item) of the data
set. Open data refers to information released in a publicly
accessible repository.
The Iris flower data set is an example of an open data.
It is also called Fisher's Iris data set as this data set was
introduced by the British statistician and biologist Ronald
Fisher in 1936. The Iris data set consists of 50 samples from
each of the three species of the flower Iris (Iris setosa, Iris
virginica and Iris versicolor). Four features were measured
for each sample: the length and the width of the sepals and
petals, in centimeters. Based on the combination of these
four features, Fisher developed a model to distinguish one
species from each other. The full data set is freely available
on UCI Machine Learning Repository at https://archive.ics.
uci.edu/ml/datasets/iris.
We shall use the following smaller section of this data set
having 30 rows (10 rows for each of the three species). We
shall include a column for species number that has a value
1 for Iris setosa, 2 for Iris virginica and 3 for Iris versicolor.

Sepal Sepal Petal Petal Species

Iris
Length Width Length Width No
5.1 3.5 1.4 0.2 Iris-setosa 1
4.9 3 1.4 0.2 Iris-setosa 1
4.7 3.2 1.3 0.2 Iris-setosa 1
4.6 3.1 1.5 0.2 Iris-setosa 1
5 3.6 1.4 0.2 Iris-setosa 1
5.4 3.9 1.7 0.4 Iris-setosa 1
4.6 3.4 1.4 0.3 Iris-setosa 1

5 3.4 1.5 0.2 Iris-setosa 1

4.4 2.9 1.4 0.2 Iris-setosa 1

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116 Informatics Practices – Class XI

Notes 4.9 3.1 1.5 0.1 Iris-setosa 1

5.5 2.6 4.4 1.2 Iris-versicolor 2
6.1 3 4.6 1.4 Iris-versicolor 2
5.8 2.6 4 1.2 Iris-versicolor 2
5 2.3 3.3 1 Iris-versicolor 2
5.6 2.7 4.2 1.3 Iris-versicolor 2
5.7 3 4.2 1.2 Iris-versicolor 2
5.7 2.9 4.2 1.3 Iris-versicolor 2
6.2 2.9 4.3 1.3 Iris-versicolor 2
5.1 2.5 3 1.1 Iris-versicolor 2
5.7 2.8 4.1 1.3 Iris-versicolor 2
6.9 3.1 5.4 2.1 Iris-virginica 3
6.7 3.1 5.6 2.4 Iris-virginica 3
6.9 3.1 5.1 2.3 Iris-virginica 3
5.8 2.7 5.1 1.9 Iris-virginica 3
6.8 3.2 5.9 2.3 Iris-virginica 3
6.7 3.3 5.7 2.5 Iris-virginica 3
6.7 3 5.2 2.3 Iris-virginica 3
6.3 2.5 5 1.9 Iris-virginica 3
6.5 3 5.2 2 Iris-virginica 3
6.2 3.4 5.4 2.3 Iris-virginica 3

You may type this using any text editor (Notepad, gEdit
or any other) in the way as shown below and store the
file with a name called Iris.txt. (In case you wish to work
with the entire dataset you could download a .csv file for the
same from the Internet and save it as Iris.txt). The
headers are:
sepal length, sepal width, petal length, petal width, iris,
Species No
5.1, 3.5, 1.4, 0.2, Iris-setosa, 1
4.9, 3, 1.4, 0.2, Iris-setosa, 1
4.7, 3.2, 1.3, 0.2, Iris-setosa, 1
4.6, 3.1, 1.5, 0.2, Iris-setosa, 1
5, 3.6, 1.4, 0.2, Iris-setosa, 1
5.4, 3.9, 1.7, 0.4, Iris-setosa, 1
4.6, 3.4, 1.4, 0.3, Iris-setosa, 1
5, 3.4, 1.5, 0.2, Iris-setosa, 1
4.4, 2.9, 1.4, 0.2, Iris-setosa, 1
4.9, 3.1, 1.5, 0.1, Iris-setosa, 1

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Introduction to NumPy 117

5.5, 2.6, 4.4, 1.2, Iris-versicolor, 2 Notes

6.1, 3, 4.6, 1.4, Iris-versicolor, 2
5.8, 2.6, 4, 1.2, Iris-versicolor, 2
5, 2.3, 3.3, 1, Iris-versicolor, 2
5.6, 2.7, 4.2, 1.3, Iris-versicolor, 2
5.7, 3, 4.2, 1.2, Iris-versicolor, 2
5.7, 2.9, 4.2, 1.3, Iris-versicolor, 2
6.2, 2.9, 4.3, 1.3, Iris-versicolor, 2
5.1, 2.5, 3, 1.1, Iris-versicolor, 2
5.7, 2.8, 4.1, 1.3, Iris-versicolor, 2
6.9, 3.1, 5.4, 2.1, Iris-virginica, 3
6.7, 3.1, 5.6, 2.4, Iris-virginica, 3
6.9, 3.1, 5.1, 2.3, Iris-virginica, 3
5.8, 2.7, 5.1, 1.9, Iris-virginica, 3
6.8, 3.2, 5.9, 2.3, Iris-virginica, 3
6.7, 3.3, 5.7, 2.5, Iris-virginica, 3
6.7, 3, 5.2, 2.3, Iris-virginica, 3
6.3, 2.5, 5, 1.9, Iris-virginica, 3
6.5, 3, 5.2, 2, Iris-virginica, 3
6.2, 3.4, 5.4, 2.3, Iris-virginica, 3

1. Load the data in the file Iris.txt in a 2-D array called

iris.
2. Drop column whose index = 4 from the array iris.
3. Display the shape, dimensions and size of iris.
4. Split iris into three 2-D arrays, each array for a different
species. Call them iris1, iris2, iris3.
5. Print the three arrays iris1, iris2, iris3
Create a 1-D array header having elements "sepal
6.
length", "sepal width", "petal length", "petal width",
"Species No" in that order.
7. Display the array header.
8. Find the max, min, mean and standard deviation for the
columns of the iris and store the results in the arrays
iris_max, iris_min, iris_avg, iris_std, iris_
var respectively. The results must be rounded to not
more than two decimal places.

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118 Informatics Practices – Class XI

Notes 9. Similarly find the max, min, mean and standard deviation
for the columns of the iris1, iris2 and iris3 and
store the results in the arrays with appropriate names.
10. Check the minimum value for sepal length, sepal width,
petal length and petal width of the three species in
comparison to the minimum value of sepal length, sepal
width, petal length and petal width for the data set as a
whole and fill the table below with True if the species value
is greater than the dataset value and False otherwise.

Iris setosa Iris virginica Iris versicolor

sepal length

sepal width

petal length

petal width

11. Compare Iris setosa’s average sepal width to that of Iris

virginica.
12. Compare Iris setosa’s average petal length to that of Iris
virginica.
13. Compare Iris setosa’s average petal width to that of Iris
virginica.
14. Save the array iris_avg in a comma separated file
named IrisMeanValues.txt on the hard disk.
15. Save the arrays iris_max, iris_avg, iris_min in
a comma separated file named IrisStat.txt on the
hard disk.
Solutions to Case Study based Exercises
>>> import numpy as np

# Solution to Q1
>>> iris = np.genfromtxt('C:/NCERT/Iris.txt',skip_
header=1, delimiter=',', dtype = float)

# Solution to Q2
>>> iris = iris[0:30,[0,1,2,3,5]] # drop column 4

# Solution to Q3
>>> iris.shape
(30, 5)
>>> iris.ndim

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Introduction to NumPy 119

2 Notes
>>> iris.size
150

# Solution to Q4
# Split into three arrays, each array for a different
# species
>>> iris1, iris2, iris3 = np.split(iris, [10,20],
axis=0)

# Solution to Q5
# Print the three arrays
>>> iris1
array([[5.1, 3.5, 1.4, 0.2, 1. ],
[4.9, 3. , 1.4, 0.2, 1. ],
[4.7, 3.2, 1.3, 0.2, 1. ],
[4.6, 3.1, 1.5, 0.2, 1. ],
[5. , 3.6, 1.4, 0.2, 1. ],
[5.4, 3.9, 1.7, 0.4, 1. ],
[4.6, 3.4, 1.4, 0.3, 1. ],
[5. , 3.4, 1.5, 0.2, 1. ],
[4.4, 2.9, 1.4, 0.2, 1. ],
[4.9, 3.1, 1.5, 0.1, 1. ]])

>>> iris2
array([[5.5, 2.6, 4.4, 1.2, 2. ],
[6.1, 3. , 4.6, 1.4, 2. ],
[5.8, 2.6, 4. , 1.2, 2. ],
[5. , 2.3, 3.3, 1. , 2. ],
[5.6, 2.7, 4.2, 1.3, 2. ],
[5.7, 3. , 4.2, 1.2, 2. ],
[5.7, 2.9, 4.2, 1.3, 2. ],
[6.2, 2.9, 4.3, 1.3, 2. ],
[5.1, 2.5, 3. , 1.1, 2. ],
[5.7, 2.8, 4.1, 1.3, 2. ]])

>>> iris3
array([[6.9, 3.1, 5.4, 2.1, 3. ],
[6.7, 3.1, 5.6, 2.4, 3. ],
[6.9, 3.1, 5.1, 2.3, 3. ],
[5.8, 2.7, 5.1, 1.9, 3. ],
[6.8, 3.2, 5.9, 2.3, 3. ],
[6.7, 3.3, 5.7, 2.5, 3. ],
[6.7, 3. , 5.2, 2.3, 3. ],
[6.3, 2.5, 5. , 1.9, 3. ],
[6.5, 3. , 5.2, 2. , 3. ],
[6.2, 3.4, 5.4, 2.3, 3. ]])

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120 Informatics Practices – Class XI

Notes # Solution to Q6
>>> header =np.array(["sepal length", "sepal
width", "petal length", "petal width",
"Species No"])

# Solution to Q7
>>> print(header)
['sepal length' 'sepal width' 'petal length' 'petal
width' 'Species No']

# Solution to Q8
# Stats for array iris
# Finds the max of the data for sepal length, sepal
width, petal length, petal width, Species No
>>> iris_max = iris.max(axis=0)
>>> iris_max
array([6.9, 3.9, 5.9, 2.5, 3. ])

# Finds the min of the data for sepal length, sepal

# width, petal length, petal width, Species No
>>> iris_min = iris.min(axis=0)
>>> iris_min
array([4.4, 2.3, 1.3, 0.1, 1. ])

# Finds the mean of the data for sepal length, sepal

# width, petal length, petal width, Species No
>>> iris_avg = iris.mean(axis=0).round(2)
>>> iris_avg
array([5.68, 3.03, 3.61, 1.22, 2. ])

# Finds the standard deviation of the data for sepal

# length, sepal width, petal length, petal width,
# Species No
>>> iris_std = iris.std(axis=0).round(2)
>>> iris_std
array([0.76, 0.35, 1.65, 0.82, 0.82])

# Solution to Q9
>>> iris1_max = iris1.max(axis=0)
>>> iris1_max
array([5.4, 3.9, 1.7, 0.4, 1. ])

>>> iris2_max = iris2.max(axis=0)

>>> iris2_max
array([6.2, 3. , 4.6, 1.4, 2. ])

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Introduction to NumPy 121

>>> iris3_max = iris3.max(axis=0) Notes

>>> iris3_max
array([6.9, 3.4, 5.9, 2.5, 3. ])

>>> iris1_min = iris1.min(axis=0)

>>> iris1_min
array([4.4, 2.9, 1.3, 0.1, 1. ])
>>> iris2_min = iris2.min(axis=0)
>>> iris2_min
array([5. , 2.3, 3. , 1. , 2. ])

>>> iris3_min = iris3.min(axis=0)

>>> iris3_min
array([5.8, 2.5, 5. , 1.9, 3. ])

>>> iris1_avg = iris1.mean(axis=0)

>>> iris1_avg
array([4.86, 3.31, 1.45, 0.22, 1. ])

>>> iris2_avg = iris2.mean(axis=0)

>>> iris2_avg
array([5.64, 2.73, 4.03, 1.23, 2. ])

>>> iris3_avg = iris3.mean(axis=0)

>>> iris3_avg
array([6.55, 3.04, 5.36, 2.2 , 3. ])

>>> iris1_std = iris1.std(axis=0).round(2)

>>> iris1_std
array([0.28, 0.29, 0.1 , 0.07, 0. ])

>>> iris2_std = iris2.std(axis=0).round(2)

>>> iris2_std
array([0.36, 0.22, 0.47, 0.11, 0. ])

>>> iris3_std = iris3.std(axis=0).round(2)

>>> iris3_std
array([0.34, 0.25, 0.28, 0.2 , 0. ])

# Solution to Q10 (solve other parts on the same lines)

# min sepal length of each species Vs the min sepal
# length in the data set
>>> iris1_min[0] > iris_min[0] #sepal length
False

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122 Informatics Practices – Class XI

Notes >>> iris2_min[0] > iris_min[0]

True
>>> iris3_min[0] > iris_min[0]
True

# Solution to Q11
#Compare Iris setosa and Iris virginica
>>> iris1_avg[1] > iris2_avg[1] #sepal width
True

# Solution to Q12
>>> iris1_avg[2] > iris2_avg[2] #petal length
False

# Solution to Q13
>>> iris1_avg[3] > iris2_avg[3] #petal width
False

# Solution to Q14
>>> np.savetxt('C:/NCERT/IrisMeanValues.txt',
iris_avg, delimiter = ',')

# Solution to Q15
>>> np.savetxt('C:/NCERT/IrisStat.txt', (iris_
max, iris_avg, iris_min), delimiter=',')

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Database Chapter

Concepts 7

In this chapter

»» Introduction
»» File System
“Inconsistency of your mind… Can damage »» Database Management
System
your memory… Remove the inconsistent
»» Relational Data Model
data… And keep the original one !!!” »» Keys in a Relational
Database
— Nisarga Jain

7.1 Introduction
After learning about importance of data in the
previous chapter, we need to explore the methods
to store and manage data electronically. Let us
take an example of a school that maintains data
about its students, along with their attendance
record and guardian details.
The class teacher marks daily attendance of the
students in the attendance register. The teacher
records ‘P’ for present or ‘A’ for absent against
each student’s roll number on each working day.
If class strength is 50 and total working days in

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124 Informatics Practices – Class XI

a month are 26, the teacher needs to record 50 × 26

records manually in the register every month. As the
volume of data increases, manual data entry becomes
tedious. Following are some of the limitations of manual
record keeping in this example:
1) Entry of student details (Roll number and name)
Activity 7.1 in the new attendance register when the student is
promoted to the next class.
Visit a few shops
where records are 2) Writing student details on each month’s attendance
maintained manually page where inconsistency may happen due to
and identify a few incorrectly written names, skipped student
limitations of manual records, etc.
record keeping faced 3) Loss of data in case attendance register is lost or
by them. damaged.
4) Erroneous calculation while consolidating
attendance record manually.
The office staff also manually maintain Student
details viz. Roll Number, Name and Date of Birth
with respective guardian details viz. Guardian name,
Contact Number and Address. This is required for
correspondence with guardian regarding student
attendance and result.
Finding information from a huge volume of papers
or deleting/modifying an entry is a difficult task in pen
and paper based approach. To overcome the hassles
faced in manual record keeping, it is desirable to store
attendance record and student details on separate data
files on a computerized system, so that office staff and
teachers can:
1) Simply copy the student details to the new
attendance file from the old attendance file when
students are promoted to next class.
2) Find any data about student or guardian.
3) Add more details to existing data whenever a new
student joins the school.
4) Modify stored data like details of student or guardian
whenever required.
5) Remove/delete data whenever a student leaves the
school.

7.2 File System

A file can be understood as a container to store data in
a computer. Files can be stored on the storage device
of a computer system. Contents of a file can be texts,
computer program code, comma separated values

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Database Concepts 125

(CSV), etc. Likewise, pictures, audios/videos, web pages

are also files.
Files stored on a computer can be accessed directly
and searched for desired data. But to access data of a
file through software, for example, to display monthly
attendance report on school website, one has to write
computer programs to access data from files.
Continuing the example of attendance at school,
we need to store data about students and attendance
in two separate files. Table 7.1 shows the contents of
STUDENT file which has six columns, as detailed below:
RollNumber – Roll number of the student
SName – Name of the student
SDateofBirth – Date of birth of the student
GName – Name of the guardian
GPhone – Phone number of the student guardian
GAddress – Address of the guardian of the student
Table 7.1 STUDENT file maintained by office staff
Roll SDateof
SName GName GPhone GAddress
Number Birth
1 Atharv Ahuja 2003-05-15 Amit Ahuja 5711492685 G-35, Ashok Vihar,
Delhi
2 Daizy Bhutia 2002-02-28 Baichung 7110047139 Flat no. 5, Darjeeling
Bhutia Appt., Shimla
3 Taleem Shah 2002-02-28 Himanshu Shah 9818184855 26/77, West Patel
Nagar, Ahmedabad
4 John Dsouza 2003-08-18 Danny Dsouza S -13, Ashok Village,
Daman
5 Ali Shah 2003-07-05 Himanshu Shah 9818184855 26/77, West Patel
Nagar, Ahmedabad

6 Manika P. 2002-03-10 Sujata P. 7802983674 HNO-13, B- block, Preet

Vihar, Madurai

Table 7.2 shows another file called ATTENDANCE

which has four columns, as detailed below:
AttendanceDate – Date for which attendance was
marked
RollNumber – Roll number of the student
SName – Name of the student
AttendanceStatus – Marked as P (present) or A (absent)

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126 Informatics Practices – Class XI

Table 7.2 ATTENDANCE file maintained by class teacher

AttendanceDate RollNumber SName AttendanceStatus
2018-09-01 1 Atharv Ahuja P
2018-09-01 2 Daizy Bhutia P
2018-09-01 3 Taleem Shah A
2018-09-01 4 John Dsouza P
2018-09-01 5 Ali Shah A
2018-09-01 6 Manika P. P
2018-09-02 1 Atharv Ahuja P
2018-09-02 2 Daizy Bhutia P
2018-09-02 3 Taleem Shah A
2018-09-02 4 John Dsouza A
2018-09-02 5 Ali Shah P
2018-09-02 6 Manika P. P

7.2.1 Limitations of a File System

File system becomes difficult to handle when number of
files increases and volume of data also grows. Following
are some of the limitations of file system:
(A) Difficulty in Access
Files themselves do not provide any mechanism to
retrieve data. Data maintained in a file system are
accessed through application programs. While writing
such programs, the developer may not anticipate all
the possible ways in which data may be accessed. So,
sometimes it is difficult to access data in the required
format and one has to write application program to
access data.
(B) Data Redundancy
Redundancy means same data are duplicated in
different places (files). In our example, student names
are maintained in both the files. Besides, in Table 7.1,
students with roll numbers 3 and 5 have same guardian
name and therefore same guardian name is maintained
twice. Both these are examples of redundancy which is
difficult to avoid in a file system. Redundancy leads to
excess storage use and may cause data inconsistency
also.
(C) Data Inconsistency
Data inconsistency occurs when same data maintained
in different places do not match. If a student wants to
get changed the spelling of her name, it needs to be

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Database Concepts 127

changed in SName column in both the files. Likewise, if Notes

a student leaves school, the details need to be deleted
from both the files. As the files are being maintained by
different people, the changes may not happen in one of
the files. In that case, the student name will be different
(inconsistent) in both the files.
(D) Data Isolation
Both the files presented at Table 7.1 (STUDENT) and at
Table 7.2 (ATTENDANCE) are related to students. But
there is no link or mapping between them. The school
will have to write separate programs to access these two
files. This is because data mapping is not supported in
file system. In a more complex system where data files
are generated by different person at different times, files
being created in isolation may be of different formats.
In such case, it is difficult to write new application
programs to retrieve data from different files maintained
at multiple places, as one has to understand the
underlying structure of each file as well.
(E) Data Dependence
Data are stored in a specific format or structure in a
file. If the structure or format itself is changed, all the
existing application programs accessing that file also
need to be change. Otherwise, the programs may not
work correctly. This is data dependency. Hence, updating
the structure of a data file requires modification in all
the application programs accessing that file.
(F) Controlled Data Sharing
There can be different category of users like teacher,
office staff and parents. Ideally, not every user should
be able to access all the data. As an example, guardians
and office staff can only see the student attendance data
but should not be able to modify/delete it. It means
these users should be given limited access (read only)
to the ATTENDANCE file. Only the teacher should be
able to update the attendance data. It is very difficult to
enforce this kind of access control in a file system while
accessing files through application programs.

7.3 Database Management System

Limitations faced in file system can be overcome by
storing the data in a database where data are logically
related. We can organise related data in a database so
that it can be managed in an efficient and easy way.

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128 Informatics Practices – Class XI

A database management system (DBMS) or database

system in short, is a software that can be used to
create and manage databases. DBMS lets users to
create a database, store, manage, update/modify and
retrieve data from that database by users or application
programs. Some examples of open source and
commercial DBMS include MySQL, Oracle, PostgreSQL,
SQL Server, Microsoft Access, MongoDB.
A database system hides certain details about
how data are actually stored and maintained. Thus,
it provides users with an abstract view of the data. A
database system has a set of programs through which
users or other programs can access, modify and retrieve
the stored data.
The DBMS serves as an interface between the
database and end users or application programs.
Some database
management systems
Retrieving data from a database through special type of
include a graphical commands is called querying the database. In addition,
user interface for users users can modify the structure of the database itself
to create and manage through a DBMS.
databases. Other Databases are widely used in various fields. Some
database systems use a
command line interface
applications are given in Table 7.3.
that requires users Table 7.3 Use of Database in Real-life Applications
to use programming Application Database to maintain data about
commands to create
and manage databases. Banking customer information, account details, loan details,
transaction details, etc.
Crop Loan kisan credit card data, farmer’s personal data, land
area and cultivation data, loan history, repayment
data, etc.
Inventory product details, customer information, order details,
Management delivery data, etc.
Organisation employee records, salary details, department
Resource information, branch locations, etc.
Management
Online items description, user login details, users
Shopping preferences details, etc.

7.3.1 File System to DBMS

Let us revisit our school example where two data files
were maintained (Table 7.1 by office and Table 7.2 by
teacher). Let us now design a database to store data of
those two files. We know that tables in a database are
linked or related through one or more common columns
or fields. In our example, the STUDENT (Table 7.1) file
and ATTENDANCE (Table 7.2) file have RollNumber
and SName as common field names. In order to convert

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Database Concepts 129

these two files into a database, we need to incorporate

the following changes:
a) SName need not be maintained in ATTENDANCE
file as it is already there in STUDENT. Details for a
student can be retrieved through the common field
RollNumber in both the files.
b) If two siblings are in the same class, then same
guardian details (GName, GPhone and GAddress)
are maintained for both the siblings. We know this High Cost is incurred
while shifting from file
is a redundancy and by using a database we can
system to DBMS:
avoid this. So let us split the STUDENT file into two
file (STUDENT file and GUARDIAN) file so that each • Purchasing
sophisticated
guardian data are maintained only once. hardware and
c) One and more guardians can have the same name. software.
So it will not be possible to identify which guardian • Training users for
is related to which student. In such case, we need querying.
to create an additional column, say GUID (Guardian • Recurrent cost to
ID) that will take unique value for each record in take regular backup
the GUARDIAN file. The column GUID will also be and perform recovery
kept with STUDENT file for relating these two files. operations.

Note: We could distinguish guardians by their phone numbers

also. But, phone number can change, and therefore may not
truly distinguish guardian.
Figure 7.1 shows the related data files for the
STUDENT, GUARDIAN and ATTENDANCE details. Note
that this is not the complete database schema since it
does not show any relationship among tables.

STUDENT GUARDIAN ATTENDANCE

RollNumber GUID AttendanceDate
SName GName RollNumber
SDateofBirth GPhone AttendanceStatus
GUID GAddress

Figure 7.1: Record structure of three files in

STUDENTATTENDANCE Database
The tables shown at Figure 7.1 are empty, which are
to be populated with actual data as shown in Table 7.4,
7.5 and 7.6.
Table 7.4 Snapshot of STUDENT table
RollNumber SName SDateofBirth GUID
1 Atharv Ahuja 2003-05-15 444444444444
2 Daizy Bhutia 2002-02-28 111111111111

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130 Informatics Practices – Class XI

3 Taleem Shah 2002-02-28

4 John Dsouza 2003-08-18 333333333333
5 Ali Shah 2003-07-05 101010101010
6 Manika P. 2002-03-10 466444444666

Table 7.5 Snapshot of GUARDIAN table

GUID GName GPhone GAddress
444444444444 Amit Ahuja 5711492685 G-35, Ashok Vihar, Delhi
111111111111 Baichung Bhutia 7110047139 Flat no. 5, Darjeeling Appt., Shimla
101010101010 Himanshu Shah 9818184855 26/77, West Patel Nagar, Ahmedabad
333333333333 Danny Dsouza S -13, Ashok Village, Daman
466444444666 Sujata P. 7802983674 HNO-13, B- block, Preet Vihar, Madurai

Table 7.6 Snapshot of ATTENDANCE table

Date RollNumber Status
2018-09-01 1 P
2018-09-01 2 P
2018-09-01 3 A
2018-09-01 4 P
2018-09-01 5 A
2018-09-01 6 P
2018-09-02 1 P
2018-09-02 2 P
2018-09-02 3 A
2018-09-02 4 A
2018-09-02 5 P
2018-09-02 6 P

Figure 7.2 shows a simplified database called

STUDENTATTENDANCE, which is used to maintain
data about the student, guardian and attendance. As
shown here, the DBMS maintains a single repository
of data at a centralized location and can be used by
multiple users (office staff, teacher) at the same time.
7.3.2 Key Concepts in DBMS
In order to efficiently manage data using a DBMS, let us
understand certain key terms:
(A) Database Schema
Database Schema is the design of a database. It is the
skeleton of the database that represents the structure
(table names and their fields/columns), the type of data
each column can hold, constraints on the data to be
stored (if any), and the relationships among the tables.

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Database Concepts 131

Teacher Office Staff

ry
Query Result

Qu

Query Result
e
Qu
er
y

DBMS Software processes Query

DBMS Software access database and its definition

Student
Database
Guardian Catalog

Attendance

Figure 7.3: StudentAttendance Database Environment

Database schema is also called the visual or logical

architecture as it tells us how the data are organised in
a database.
(B) Data Constraint
Sometimes we put certain restrictions or limitations on
the type of data that can be inserted in one or more
columns of a table. This is done by specifying one or
more constraints on that column(s) while creating the
tables. For example, one can define the constraint that
the column mobile number can only have non-negative
integer values of exactly 10 digits. Since each student
shall have one unique roll number, we can put the NOT
NULL and UNIQUE constraints on the RollNumber
column. Constraints are used to ensure accuracy and
reliability of data in the database
(C) Meta-data or Data Dictionary
The database schema along with various constraints on the
data is stored by DBMS in a database catalog or dictionary,
called meta-data. A meta-data is data about the data.
(D) Database Instance
When we define database structure or schema, state
of database is empty i.e. no data entry is there. After

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132 Informatics Practices – Class XI

loading data, the state or snapshot of the database

at any given time is the database instance. We may
then retrieve data through queries or manipulate data
through updation, modification or deletion. Thus, the
state of database can change, and thus a database
schema can have many instances at different times.
(E) Query
A query is a request to a database for obtaining
information in a desired way. Query can be made to get
data from one table or from a combination of tables. For
example, “find names of all those students present on
Attendance Date 2000-01-02” is a query to the database.
To retrieve or manipulate data, the user needs to write
query using a query language called, which is discussed
in chapter 8.
(F) Data Manipulation
Limitations of DBMS Modification of database consists of three operations
Increased Complexity: viz. Insertion, Deletion or Update. Suppose Rivaan joins
Use of DBMS increases as a new student in the class then the student details
the complexity need to be added in STUDENT as well as in GUARDIAN
of maintaining
files of the Student Attendance database. This is called
functionalities like
security, consistency, Insertion operation on the database. In case a student
sharing and integrity leaves the school, then his/her data as well as her
guardian details need to be removed from STUDENT,
Increased data GUARDIAN and ATTENDANCE files, respectively. This
vulnerability:
As data are stored
is called Deletion operation on the database. Suppose
centrally, it increases Atharv’s Guardian has changed his mobile number, his
the chances of loss GPhone should be updated in GUARDIAN file. This is
of data due to any called Update operation on the database.
failure of hardware or
software. It can bring (G) Database Engine
all operations to a halt Database engine is the underlying component or set of
for all the users. programs used by a DBMS to create database and handle
various queries for data retrieval and manipulation.

7.4 Relational Data Model

Different types of DBMS are available and their
classification is done based on the underlying data model.
A data model describes the structure of the database,
including how data are defined and represented,
relationships among data, and the constraints. The most
commonly used data model is Relational Data Model.
Other types of data models include object-oriented data
model, entity-relationship data model, document model
and hierarchical data model. This book discusses the
DBMS based on relational data model.

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Database Concepts 133

In relational model, tables are called relations that

store data for different columns. Each table can have
multiple columns where each column name should be
unique. For example, each row in the table represents a
related set of values. Each row of Table 7.5 represents a
particular guardian and has related values viz. guardian’s
ID with guardian name, address and phone number.
Thus, a table consists of a collection of relationships.
It is important to note here that relations in a database
are not independent tables, but are associated with each
other. For example, relation ATTENDANCE has attribute
RollNumber which links it with corresponding student
record in relation STUDENT. Similarly, attribute GUID
is placed with STUDENT table for extracting guardian
details of a particular student. If linking attributes are
not there in appropriate relations, it will not be possible
to keep the database in correct state and retrieve valid
information from the database.
Figure 7.3 shows the relational database Student
Attendance along with the three relations (tables)
STUDENT, ATTENDANCE and GUARDIAN.

Figure 7.4: Representing StudentAttendance Database using Relational Data Model

Table 7.7 Relation schemas along with its description of Student Attendance
database
Relation Scheme Description of attributes
STUDENT(RollNumber, RollNumber: unique id of the student
SName, SDateofBirth, SName: name of the student
GUID) SDateofBirth: date of birth of the student
GUID: unique id of the guardian of the student
ATTENDANCE AttendanceDate: date on which attendance is taken
(AttendanceDate, RollNumber: roll number of the student
RollNumber, AttendanceStatus: whether present (P) or absent(A)
AttendanceStatus) Note that combination of AttendanceDate and RollNumber will be unique
in each record of the table
GUARDIAN(GUID, GUID: unique id of the guardian
GName, GPhone, GName: name of the guardian
GAddress) GPhone: contact number of the guardian
GAddress: contact address of the guardian

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134 Informatics Practices – Class XI

Each tuple (row) in a relation (table) corresponds

to data of a real world entity (for example, Student,
Guardian, and Attendance). In the GUARDIAN relation
(Table 7.5), each row represents the facts about the
guardian and each column name in the GUARDIAN table
is used to interpret the meaning of data stored under that
column. A database that is modeled on relational data
model concept is called Relational Database. Figure 7.4
shows relation GUARDIAN with some populated data.
Let us now understand the commonly used
terminologies in relational data model using Figure 7.4.
Relation GUARDIAN
with 4 attribute/
columns

GUID GName GPhone GAddress

444444444444 Amit Ahuja 5711492685 G-35, Ashok Vihar, Delhi
111111111111 Baichung Bhutia 7110047139 Flat no. 5, Darjeeling Appt., Shimla

Relation
State
101010101010 Himanshu Shah 9818184855 26/77, West Patel Nagar, Ahmedabad
333333333333 Danny Dsouza S -13, Ashok Village, Daman
466444444666 Sujata P. 7802983674 HNO-13, B- block, Preet Vihar, Madurai

Facts about RELATION GUARDIAN:

1. Degree (Number of attributes) = 4 Record/tuple/row
2. Cardinality (Number of rows/tuples/records) = 5
3. Relation is a flat file i.e, each column has a single value and each record
has same number of columns
Figure 7.5: Relation GUARDIAN with its Attributes and Tuples

i) ATTRIBUTE: Characteristic or parameters for

which data are to be stored in a relation. Simply
stated, the columns of a relation are the attributes
which are also referred as fields. For example, GUID,
GName, GPhone and GAddress are attributes of
relation GUARDIAN.
ii) TUPLE: Each row of data in a relation (table) is
called a tuple. In a table with n columns, a tuple is
a relationship between the n related values.
iii) DOMAIN: It is a set of values from which an
attribute can take a value in each row. Usually, a
data type is used to specify domain for an attribute.
For example, in STUDENT relation, the attribute
RollNumber takes integer values and hence its
domain is a set of integer values. Similarly, the set
of character strings constitutes the domain of the
attribute SName.

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Database Concepts 135

iv) DEGREE: The number of attributes in a relation Notes

is called the Degree of the relation. For example,
relation GUARDIAN with four attributes is a relation
of degree 4.
v) CARDINALITY: The number of tuples in a relation
is called the Cardinality of the relation. For example,
the cardinality of relation GUARDIAN is 5 as there
are 5 tuples in the table.

7.4.1 Three Important Properties of a Relation

In relational data model, following three properties
are observed with respect to a relation which makes a
relation different from a data file or a simple table.
Property 1: imposes following rules on an attribute of
the relation.
• Each attribute in a relation has a unique name.
• Sequence of attributes in a relation is immaterial.
Property 2: governs following rules on a tuple of a
relation.
• Each tuple in a relation is distinct. For example, data
values in no two tuples of relation ATTENDANCE
can be identical for all the attributes. Thus, each
tuple of a relation must be uniquely identified by
its contents.
• Sequence of tuples in a relation is immaterial.
The tuples are not considered to be ordered, even
though they appear to be in tabular form.
Property 3: imposes following rules on the state of a
relation.
• All data values in an attribute must be from the
same domain (same data type).
• Each data value associated with an attribute
must be atomic (cannot be further divisible into
meaningful subparts). For example, GPhone of
relation GUARDIAN has ten digit numbers which
is indivisible.
• No attribute can have many data values in one
tuple. For example, Guardian cannot specify
multiple contact numbers under GPhone attribute.
• A special value “NULL” is used to represent
values that are unknown or non-applicable to
certain attributes. For example, if a guardian does
not share his or her contact number with the
school authorities, then GPhone is set to NULL
(data unknown).

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136 Informatics Practices – Class XI

Notes 7.5 Keys in a Relational Database

The tuples within a relation must be distinct. It means no two
tuples in a table should have same value for all attributes.
That is, there should be at least one attribute in which
data are distinct (unique) and not NULL. That way, we can
uniquely distinguish each tuple of a relation. So, relational
data model imposes some restrictions or constraints on the
values of the attributes and how the contents of one relation
be referred through another relation. These restrictions
are specified at the time of defining the database through
different types of keys as given below:
7.5.1 Candidate Key
A relation can have one or more attributes that takes
distinct values. Any of these attributes can be used to
uniquely identify the tuples in the relation. Such attributes
are called candidate keys as each of them are candidates
for the primary key.
As shown in Figure 7.4, the relation GUARDIAN has
four attributes out of which GUID and GPhone always take
unique values. No two guardians will have same phone
number or same GUID. Hence, these two attributes are the
candidate keys as they both are candidates for primary key.
7.5.2 Primary Key
Out of one or more candidate keys, the attribute chosen
by the database designer to uniquely identify the tuples
in a relation is called the primary key of that relation. The
remaining attributes in the list of candidate keys are called
the alternate keys.
In the relation GUARDIAN, suppose GUID is chosen as
primary key, then GPhone will be called the alternate key.
7.5.3 Composite Primary Key
If no single attribute in a relation is able to uniquely
distinguish the tuples, then more than one attribute are
taken together as primary key. Such primary key consisting
of more than one attribute is called Composite Primary key.
In relation ATTENDANCE, Roll Number cannot be used
as primary key as roll number of same student will appear
in another row for a different date. Similarly, in relation
Attendance, AttendanceDate cannot be used as primary
key because same date is repeated for each roll number.
However combination of these two attributes RollNumber and
AttendanceDate together would always have unique value in
ATTENDANCE table as on any working day, of a student
would be marked attendance only once. Hence {RollNumber,

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Database Concepts 137

AttendanceDate} will make the of ATTENDANCE relation

composite primary key.
7.5.4 Foreign Key
A foreign key is used to represent the relationship between
two relations. A foreign key is an attribute whose value
is derived from the primary key of another relation. This
means that any attribute of a relation (referencing),
which is used to refer contents from another (referenced)
relation, becomes foreign key if it refers to the primary key
of referenced relation. The referencing relation is called
Foreign Relation. In some cases, foreign key can take NULL
value if it is not the part of primary key of the foreign table.
The relation in which the referenced primary key is defined
is called primary relation or master relation.
In Figure 7.5, two foreign keys in Student Attendance
database are shown using schema diagram where the foreign
key is displayed as a directed arc (arrow) originating from it
and ending at the corresponding attribute of the primary
key of the referenced table. The underlined attributes make
the primary key of that table.

STUDENT RollNumber SName SDateofBirth GUID

GUARDIAN GUID GName GPhone GAddress

ATTENDANCE AttendanceDate RollNumber AttendanceStatus

Figure 7.2: StudentAttendance Database with the Primary and Foreign keys

Summary
• A file in a file system is a container to store data in a
computer.
• File system suffers from Data Redundancy, Data
Inconsistency, Data Isolation, Data Dependence and
Controlled Data sharing.
• Database Management System (DBMS) is a software
to create and manage databases. A database is a
collection of tables.
• Database schema is the design of a database
• A database constraint is a restriction on the type of
data that that can be inserted into the table.
• Database schema and database constraints are stored
in database Catalog.

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138 Informatics Practices – Class XI

• Whereas the snapshot of the database at any given

time is the database instance.
• A query is a request to a database for information
retrieval and data manipulation (insertion, deletion or
update). It is written in Structured Query Language
(SQL).
• Relational DBMS (RDBMS) is used to store data in
related tables. Rows and columns of a table are called
tuples and attributed respectively. A table is referred
to as a relation.
• Destructions on data stored in a RDBMS is applied
by use of keys such as Candidate Key, Primary Key,
Composite Primary Key, Foreign Key.
• Primary key in a relation is used for unique identification
of tuples.
• Foreign key is used to relate two tables or relations.
• Each column in a table represents a feature (attribute)
of a record. Table stores the information for an entity
whereas a row represents a record.
• Each row in a table represents a record. A tuple is
a collection of attribute values that makes a record
unique.
• A tuple is a unique entity whereas attribute values can
be duplicate in the table.
• SQL is the standard language for RDBMS systems like
MySQL.

Exercise
1. Give the terms for each of the following:
a) Collection of logically related records.
b) DBMS creates a file that contains description about the
data stored in the database.
c) Attribute that can uniquely identify the tuples in a
relation.
d) Special value that is stored when actual data value is
unknown for an attribute.
e) An attribute which can uniquely identify tuples of the
table but is not defined as primary key of the table.
f) Software that is used to create, manipulate and maintain
a relational database.
2. Why foreign keys are allowed to have NULL values? Explain
with an example.

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Database Concepts 139

3. Differentiate between: Notes

a) Database state and database schema
b) Primary key and foreign key
c) Degree and cardinality of a relation
4. Compared to a file system, how does a database management
system avoid redundancy in data through a database?
5. What are the limitations of file system that can be overcome
by a relational DBMS?
6. A school has a rule that each student must participate in a
sports activity. So each one should give only one preference
for sports activity. Suppose there are five students in a class,
each having a unique roll number. The class representative
has prepared a list of sports preferences as shown below.
Answer the following:
Table: Sports Preferences
Roll_no Preference
9 Cricket
13 Football
17 Badminton
17 Football
21 Hockey
24 NULL
NULL Kabaddi
a) Roll no 24 may not be interested in sports. Can a NULL
value be assigned to that student’s preference field?
b) Roll no 17 has given two preferences sports. Which
property of relational DBMC is violated here? Can we use
any constraint or key in the relational DBMS to check
against such violation, if any?
c) Kabaddi was not chosen by any student. Is it possible to
have this tuple in the Sports Preferences relation?
7. In another class having 2 sections, the two respective class
representatives have prepared 2 separate Sports Preferences
tables, as shown below:
Sports preference of section 1 (arranged on roll number column)
Table: Sports Preferences
Roll_no Sports
9 Cricket
13 Football
17 Badminton
21 Hockey
24 Cricket
Sports preference of section 2 (arranged on Sports name
column, and column order is also different)

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140 Informatics Practices – Class XI

Notes Table: Sports Preferences

Sports Roll_no
Badminton 17
Cricket 9
Cricket 24
Football 13
Hockey 21

Are the states of both the relations equivalent?

Justify.
8. The school canteen wants to maintain records of items
available in the school canteen and generate bills when
students purchase any item from the canteen. The school
wants to create a canteen database to keep track of items
in the canteen and the items purchased by students.
Design a database by answering the following questions:
a) To store each item name along with its price, what
relation should be used? Decide appropriate attribute
names along with their data type. Each item and its
price should be stored only once. What restriction
should be used while defining the relation?
b) In order to generate bill, we should know the quantity
of an item purchased. Should this information be in
a new relation or a part of the previous relation? If
a new relation is required, decide appropriate name
and data type for attributes. Also, identify appropriate
primary key and foreign key so that the following two
restrictions are satisfied:
i) The same bill cannot be generated for different
orders.
ii) Bill can be generated only for available items in
the canteen.
c) The school wants to find out how many calories
students intake when they order an item. In which
relation should the attribute ‘calories’ be stored?
9. An organisation wants to create a database EMP-
DEPENDENT to maintain following details about its
employees and their dependent.
EMPLOYEE(AadharNumber, Name, Address,
Department,EmployeeID)
DEPENDENT(EmployeeID, DependentName,
Relationship)
a) Name the attributes of EMPLOYEE, which can be
used as candidate keys.
b) The company wants to retrieve details of dependent
of a particular employee. Name the tables and the
key which are required to retrieve this detail.

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Database Concepts 141

c) What is the degree of EMPLOYEE and DEPENDENT

relation?
10. School uniform is available at M/s Sheetal Private
Limited. They have maintained SCHOOL_UNIFORM
Database with two relations viz. UNIFORM and COST.
The following figure shows database schema and its state.

School Uniform Database

Attributes and Constraints

Table:
UCode Size COST Price
Table: UNIFORM 1 M 500
Attribute UCode UName UColor 1 L 580
Constraints Primary Key Not Null - 1 XL 620
2 M 810
Table: COST 2 L 890
Attribute UCode Size Price 2 XL 940
Constraints Composite Primary Key >0
3 M 770
3 L 830
Table: UNIFORM 3 XL 910
UCode UName UColor 4 S 150
1 Shirt White 4 L 170
2 Pant Grey 5 S 180
3 Skirt Grey 5 L 210
4 Tie Blue 6 M 110
5 Socks Blue 6 L 140
6 Belt Blue 6 XL 160

a) Can they insert the following tuples to the UNIFORM

Relation? Give reasons in support of your answer.
i) 7, Handkerchief, NULL
ii) 4, Ribbon, Red
iii) 8, NULL, White
b) Can they insert the following tuples to the COST
Relation? Give reasons in support of your answer.
i) 7, S, 0
ii) 9, XL, 100
11. In a multiplex, movies are screened in different
auditoriums. One movie can be shown in more than one
auditorium. In order to maintain the record of movies,
the multiplex maintains a relational database consisting
of two relations viz. MOVIE and AUDI respectively as
shown below:
Movie(Movie_ID, MovieName, ReleaseDate)
Audi(AudiNo, Movie_ID, Seats, ScreenType,
TicketPrice)

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142 Informatics Practices – Class XI

a) Is it correct to assign Movie_ID as the primary

key in the MOVIE relation? If no, then suggest an
appropriate primary key.
b) Is it correct to assign AudiNo as the primary key in
the AUDI relation? If no, then suggest appropriate
primary key.
c) Is there any foreign key in any of these relations?

Student Project Database

Table: STUDENT
Roll No Name Class Section Registration_ID
11 Mohan XI 1 IP-101-15
12 Sohan XI 2 IP-104-15
21 John XII 1 CS-103-14
Table: PROJECT ASSIGNED
22 Meena XII 2 CS-101-14
Registration_ID ProjectNo
23 Juhi XII 2 CS-101-10
IP-101-15 101
Table: PROJECT IP-104-15 103
ProjectNo PName SubmissionDate CS-103-14 102
101 Airline Database 12/01/2018 CS-101-14 105
102 Library Database 12/01/2018 CS-101-10 104
103 Employee Database 15/01/2018
104 Student Database 12/01/2018
105 Inventory Database 15/01/2018
106 Railway Database 15/01/2018

12. For the above given database STUDENT-PROJECT,

answer the following:
a) Name primary key of each table.
b) Find foreign key(s) in table PROJECT-ASSIGNED.
c) Is there any alternate key in table STUDENT? Give
justification for your answer.
d) Can a user assign duplicate value to the field RollNo
of STUDENT table? Jusify.
13. For the above given database STUDENT-PROJECT, can
we perform the following operations?
a) Insert a student record with missing roll number
value.
b) Insert a student record with missing registration
number value.
c) Insert a project detail without submission-date.
d) Insert a record with registration ID IP-101-19 and
ProjectNo 206 in table PROJECT-ASSIGNED.

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Introduction to Chapter

Structured Query 8
Language (SQL)

In this chapter

»» Introduction
»» Structured Query
“The most important motivation for the Language (SQL)
research work that resulted in the relational »» Data Types and
model was the objective of providing a sharp Constraints in MySQL
and clear boundary between the logical and »» SQL for Data Definition
physical aspects of database management.” »» SQL for Data
Manipulation
– E. F. Codd »» SQL for Data Query
»» Data Updation and
Deletion

8.1 Introduction
We have learnt about Relational Database
Management System (RDBMS) and purpose in the
previous chapter. There are many RDBMS such
as MySQL, Microsoft SQL Server, PostgreSQL,
Oracle, etc. that allow us to create a database
consisting of relations and to link one or more
relations for efficient querying to store, retrieve
and manipulate data on that database. In this
chapter, we will learn how to create, populate and
query database using MySQL.

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144 Informatics Practices – Class XI

8.2 Structured Query Language (SQL)

One has to write application programs to access data in
case of a file system. However, for database management
systems there are special kind of programming
languages called query language that can be used to
access data from the database. The Structured Query
Language (SQL) is the most popular query language
used by major relational database management systems
such as MySQL, ORACLE, SQL Server, etc.
SQL is easy to learn as the statements comprise of
descriptive English words and are not case sensitive.
We can create and interact with a database using SQL
in an efficient and easy way. The benefit with SQL is
that we don’t have to specify how to get the data from
the database. Rather, we simply specify what is to be
retrieved, and SQL does the rest. Although called a query
language, SQL can do much more besides querying.
SQL provides statements for defining the structure of
the data, manipulating data in the database, declare
constraints and retrieve data from the database in
various ways, depending on our requirements.
In this chapter, we will learn how to create a database
using MySQL as the RDBMS software. We will create a
database called StudentAttendance (Figure 7.5) that we
had identified in the previous chapter. We will also learn
how to populate database with data, manipulate data in
that and retrieve data from the database through SQL
queries.
8.2.1 Installing MySQL
MySQL is an open source RDBMS software which can
be easily downloaded from the official website https://
dev.mysql.com/downloads. After installing MySQL,
start MySQL service. The appearance of mysql> prompt
(Figure 8.1) means that MySQL is ready for us to enter
SQL statements.
Few rules to follow while writing SQL statements in
MySQL:
Activity 8.1 • SQL is case insensitive. That means name and NAME
are same for SQL.
Explore LibreOffice
Base and compare it • Always end SQL statements with a semicolon (;).
with MySQL • To enter multiline SQL statements, we don’t write
‘;’ after the first line. We put enter to continue on
next line. The prompt mysql> then changes to ‘->’,

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Introduction to Structured Query Language (SQL) 145

indicating that statement is continued to the next

line. After the last line, put ‘;’ and press enter.

8.3 Data Types and Constraints in MySQL

Figure 8.1: MySQL Shell

We know that a database consists of one or more

relations and each relation (table) is made up of attributes Activity 8.2
(column). Each attribute has a data type. We can also What are the other
specify constraints for each attribute of a relation. data types supported in
MySQL? Are there other
8.3.1 Data type of Attribute variants of integer and
float data type?
Data type indicates the type of data value that an
attribute can have. The data type of an attribute decides
the operations that can be performed on the data of
that attribute. For example, arithmetic operations can Think and Reflect
Can you think of an
be performed on numeric data but not on character
attribute for which
data. Commonly used data types in MySQL are numeric fixed length string is
types, date and time types, and string (character and suitable?
byte) types as shown in Table 8.1.
Table 8.1 Commonly used data types in MySQL
Data type Description
CHAR(n) Specifies character type data of length n where n could be any value from 0 to
255. CHAR is of fixed length, means, declaring CHAR (10) implies to reserve
spaces for 10 characters. If data does not have 10 characters (for example,
‘city’ has four characters), MySQL fills the remaining 6 characters with spaces
padded on the right.
VARCHAR(n) Specifies character type data of length ‘n’ where n could be any value from 0
to 65535. But unlike CHAR, VARCHAR is a variable-length data type. That is,
declaring VARCHAR (30) means a maximum of 30 characters can be stored
but the actual allocated bytes will depend on the length of entered string. So
‘city’ in VARCHAR (30) will occupy the space needed to store 4 characters only.

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146 Informatics Practices – Class XI

INT INT specifies an integer value. Each INT value occupies 4 bytes of storage. The
range of values allowed in integer type are -2147483648 to 2147483647. For
values larger than that, we have to use BIGINT, which occupies 8 bytes.
FLOAT Holds numbers with decimal points. Each FLOAT value occupies 4 bytes.
DATE The DATE type is used for dates in 'YYYY-MM-DD' format. YYYY is the 4 digit
year, MM is the 2 digit month and DD is the 2 digit date. The supported range
is '1000-01-01' to '9999-12-31'.

8.3.2 Constraints
Think and Reflect
Which two constraints
Constraints are certain types of restrictions on the data
when applied together values that an attribute can have. They are used to
will produce a Primary ensure the accuracy and reliability of data. However, it
Key constraint? is not mandatory to define constraint for each attribute
of a table. Table 8.2 lists various SQL constraints.
Table 8.2 Commonly used SQL Constraints
Constraint Description
NOT NULL Ensures that a column cannot have NULL values where NULL means missing/
unknown/not applicable value.
UNIQUE Ensures that all the values in a column are distinct/unique.
DEFAULT A default value specified for the column if no value is provided.
PRIMARY KEY The column which can uniquely identify each row or record in a table.
FOREIGN KEY The column which refers to value of an attribute defined as primary key in another
table.

8.4 SQL for Data Definition

SQL provides commands for defining the relation
schemas, modifying relation schemas and deleting
relations. These are called Data Definition Language
(DDL) through which the set of relations are specified,
including their schema, data type for each attribute, the
constraints as well as the security and access related
authorisations.
Data definition starts with the create statement. This
statement is used to create a database and its tables
(relations). Before creating a database, we should be
clear about the number of tables in the database, the
columns (attributes) in each table along with the data
type of each column. This is how we decide the relation
schema.
8.4.1 CREATE Database
To create a database, we use the CREATE DATABASE
statement as shown in the following syntax:
CREATE DATABASE databasename;

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Introduction to Structured Query Language (SQL) 147

To create a database called StudentAttendance, we

will type following command at mysql prompt.
mysql> CREATE DATABASE StudentAttendance;
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.02 sec)
Note: In LINUX environment, names for database and tables
are case-sensitive whereas in WINDOWS, there is no such Show
differentiation. However, as a good practice, it is suggested to write
database or table name in the same letter cases that were used at
the time of their creation.
A DBMS can manage multiple databases on one
computer. Therefore, we need to select the database
that we want to use. Once the database is selected, we
can proceed with creating tables or querying data. Write
the following SQL statement for using the database:
mysql> USE StudentAttendance;
Database changed Activity 8.3
Initially, the created database is empty. It can be Type the statement
checked by using the Show tables command that lists show database;. Does
names of all the tables within a database. it show the name of
StudentAttendance
mysql> SHOW TABLES; database?
Empty set (0.06 sec)

8.4.2 CREATE Table

After creating database StudentAttendance, we need
to define relations (create tables) in this database and
specify attributes for each relation along with data types
for each attribute. This is done using the CREATE TABLE
statement.
Syntax:
CREATE TABLE tablename(
attributename1 datatype constraint,
attributename2 datatype constraint,
:
attributenameN datatype constraint);
It is important to observe the following points with
respect to the Create Table statement:
• N is the degree of the relation, means there are N
columns in the table.
• Attribute name specifies the name of the column in
the table.
• Datatype specifies the type of data that an attribute
can hold.
• Constraint indicates the restrictions imposed on the
values of an attribute. By default, each attribute can
take NULL values except for the primary key.

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148 Informatics Practices – Class XI

Let us identify data types of the attributes of table

STUDENT along with their constraint, if any. Assuming
maximum students in a class to be 100 and values of
roll number in a sequence from 1 to 100, we know that
3 digits are sufficient to store values for the attribute
RollNumber. Hence, data type INT is appropriate for this
attribute. Total number of characters in student names
(SName) can differ. Assuming maximum characters in
a name as 20, we use VARCHAR(20) for SName column.
Data type for the attribute SDateofBirth is DATE and
supposing the school uses guardian’s 12 digit Aadhaar
number as GUID, we can declare GUID as CHAR (12)
since Aadhaar number is of fixed length and we are not
going to perform any mathematical operation on GUID.
Table 8.3, 8.4 and 8.5 show the chosen data type and
constraint for each attribute of the relations STUDENT,
GUARDIAN and ATTENDANCE, respectively.
Table 8.3 Data types and constraints for the attributes of relation STUDENT
Attribute Name Data expected to be stored Data type Constraint
RollNumber Numeric value consisting of maximum 3 digits INT PRIMARY KEY
SName Variant length string of maximum 20 characters VARCHAR(20) NOT NULL
SDateofBirth Date value DATE NOT NULL
GUID Numeric value consisting of 12 digits CHAR (12) FOREIGN KEY

Table 8.4 Data types and constraints for the attributes of relation GUARDIAN
Attribute Name Data expected to be stored Data type Constraint
GUID Numeric value consisting of 12 digit Aadhaar CHAR (12) PRIMARY KEY
number
GName Variant length string of maximum 20 VARCHAR(20) NOT NULL
characters
GPhone Numeric value consisting of 10 digits CHAR(10) NULL UNIQUE
GAddress Variant length string of size 30 characters VARCHAR(30) NOT NULL

Table 8.5 Data types and constraints for the attributes of relation ATTENDANCE.
Attribute Name Data expected to be stored Data type Constraint
AttendanceDate Date value DATE PRIMARY KEY*
RollNumber Numeric value consisting of maximum 3 INT PRIMARY KEY*
digits FOREIGN KEY
AttendanceStatus ‘P’ for present and ‘A’ for absent CHAR(1) NOT NULL
*means part of composite primary key

Once data types and constraints are identified, let us

create tables without specifying constraint along with
the attribute name for simplification. We will learn to
incorporate constraints on attributes in Section 8.4.4.

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Introduction to Structured Query Language (SQL) 149

Example 8.1 Create table STUDENT.

mysql> CREATE TABLE STUDENT( Think and Reflect
-> RollNumber INT, Can we have a CHAR
-> SName VARCHAR(20), or VARCHAR data type
-> SDateofBirth DATE, for contact number
-> GUID CHAR(12), (mobile, landline)?
-> PRIMARY KEY (RollNumber));
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.91 sec)
Note: ‘,’ is used to separate two attributes and each statement
terminates with a semi-colon (;). The symbol ‘->’ indicates line
continuation as SQL statement may not complete in a single line.
Activity 8.4
8.4.3 DESCRIBE Table
We can view the structure of an already created table Create the other two
relations GUARDIAN
using the describe statement.
and ATTENDANCE
Syntax: as per data types
DESCRIBE tablename; given in Table 8.4 and
8.5, and view their
MySQL also supports the short form DESC of DESCRIBE structures. Don't add
to get description of table. To retrieve details about the any constraint in the
structure of relation STUDENT, we can write DESC or two tables.
DESCRIBE followed by table name:
mysql> DESC STUDENT;
+--------------+-------------+------+-----+---------+-------+
| Field | Type | Null | Key | Default | Extra |
+--------------+-------------+------+-----+---------+-------+
| RollNumber | int | NO | PRI | NULL | |
| SName | varchar(20) | YES | | NULL | |
| SDateofBirth | date | YES | | NULL | |
| GUID | char(12) | YES | | NULL | |
+--------------+-------------+------+-----+---------+-------+
4 rows in set (0.06 sec)
The show table command will now return the table
STUDENT:
mysql> SHOW TABLES;
+------------------------------+
| Tables_in_studentattendance |
+------------------------------+
| student |
+------------------------------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)

8.4.4 ALTER Table

After creating a table we may realize that we need to
add/remove an attribute or to modify the datatype of an
existing attribute or to add constraint in attribute. In all
such cases, we need to change or alter the structure of
the table by using the alter statement.
Syntax:
ALTER TABLE tablename ADD/Modify/DROP attribute1,
attribute2,..

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150 Informatics Practices – Class XI

(A) Add primary key to a relation

Let us now alter the tables created in Activity 8.4. The
below MySQL statement adds a primary key to the
GUARDIAN relation:
mysql> ALTER TABLE GUARDIAN ADD PRIMARY KEY (GUID);
Query OK, 0 rows affected (1.14 sec)
Records: 0 Duplicates: 0 Warnings: 0
Now let us add primary key to the ATTENDANCE
relation. The primary key of this relation is a composite
key made up of two attributes — AttendanceDate and
RollNumber.
mysql> ALTER TABLE ATTENDANCE
-> ADD PRIMARY KEY(AttendanceDate,
-> RollNumber);
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.52 sec)
Records: 0 Duplicates: 0 Warnings: 0
(B) Add foreign key to a relation
Once primary keys are added the next step is to add
foreign keys to the relation (if any). A relation may have
multiple foreign keys and each foreign key is defined on
a single attribute. Following points need to be observed
while adding foreign key to a relation:
• The referenced relation must be already created.
• The referenced attribute must be a part of primary
key of the referenced relation.
• Data types and size of referenced and referencing
attributes must be same.
Syntax:
ALTER TABLE table_name ADD FOREIGN KEY(attribute
name) REFERENCES referenced_table_name
(attribute name);
Let us now add foreign key to the table STUDENT.
Table 8.3 shows that attribute GUID (the referencing
Think and Reflect attribute) is a foreign key and it refers to attribute GUID
Name foreign keys in (the referenced attribute) of table GUARDIAN (Table 8.4).
table ATTENDANCE Hence, STUDENT is the referencing table and GUARDIAN
and STUDENT. Is there
is the referenced table.
any foreign key in table
GUARDIAN. mysql> ALTER TABLE STUDENT
-> ADD FOREIGN KEY(GUID) REFERENCES
-> GUARDIAN(GUID);
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.75 sec)
Records: 0 Duplicates: 0 Warnings: 0
(C) Add constraint UNIQUE to an existing attribute
In GUARDIAN table, attribute GPhone has a constraint
UNIQUE which means no two values in that column
should be same.
Syntax:

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Introduction to Structured Query Language (SQL) 151

ALTER TABLE table_name ADD UNIQUE (attribute

name);
Let us now add the constraint UNIQUE with attribute
GPhone of the table GUARDIAN as shown at table 8.4. Activity 8.5
mysql> ALTER TABLE GUARDIAN Add foreign key in
-> ADD UNIQUE(GPhone); the ATTENDANCE
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.44 sec)
table (use fig. 8.1 to
Records: 0 Duplicates: 0 Warnings: 0
identify referencing and
(D) Add an attribute to an existing table referenced tables).
Sometimes, we may need to add an additional attribute
in a table. It can be done using the syntax given below:
ALTER TABLE table_name ADD attribute_name DATATYPE;
Suppose the principal of the school has decided to
award scholarship to some needy students for which
income of the guardian must be known. But school has
not maintained income attribute with table GUARDIAN
so far. Therefore, the database designer now needs to
add a new attribute income of data type INT in the table
GUARDIAN.
mysql> ALTER TABLE GUARDIAN
-> ADD income INT;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.47 sec)
Records: 0 Duplicates: 0 Warnings: 0 Think and Reflect
What are the minimum
(E) Modify datatype of an attribute and maximum income
We can modify data types of the existing attributes of a values that can be
table using the following ALTER statement. entered in the income
attribute given the data
Syntax:
type is INT?
ALTER TABLE table_name MODIFY attribute DATATYPE;
Suppose we need to change the size of attribute
GAddress from VARCHAR(30) to VARCHAR(40) of the
GUARDIAN table. The MySQL statement will be:
mysql> ALTER TABLE GUARDIAN
-> MODIFY GAddress VARCHAR(40);
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.11 sec)
Records: 0 Duplicates: 0 Warnings: 0

(F) Modify constraint of an attribute

When we create a table, by default each attribute takes
NULL value except for the attribute defined as primary
key. We can change an attribute’s constraint from NULL
to NOT NULL using alter statement.
Syntax:
ALTER TABLE table_name MODIFY attribute DATATYPE
NOT NULL;
Note: We have to specify the data type of the attribute along with
constraint NOT NULL while using MODIFY.

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152 Informatics Practices – Class XI

Notes To associate NOT NULL constraint with attribute

SName of table STUDENT (table 8.3), we write the
following MySQL statement:
mysql> ALTER TABLE STUDENT
-> MODIFY SName VARCHAR(20) NOT NULL;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.47 sec)
Records: 0 Duplicates: 0 Warnings: 0

(G) Add default value to an attribute

If we want to specify default value for an attribute, then
use the following syntax:
ALTER TABLE table_name MODIFY attribute DATATYPE
DEFAULT default_value;
To set default value of SDateofBirth of STUDENT to
15th May 2000, we write the following statement:
mysql> ALTER TABLE STUDENT
-> MODIFY SDateofBirth DATE DEFAULT
-> 2000-05-15;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.08 sec)
Records: 0 Duplicates: 0 Warnings: 0
Note: We have to specify the data type of the attribute along with
DEFAULT while using MODIFY.

(H) Remove an attribute

Using ALTER, we can remove attributes from a table, as
shown in the below syntax:
ALTER TABLE table_name DROP attribute;
To remove the attribute income from the table
GUARDIAN (8.4), we can write the following MySQL
statement:
mysql> ALTER TABLE GUARDIAN DROP income;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.42 sec)
Records: 0 Duplicates: 0 Warnings: 0
(I) Remove primary key from the table
While creating a table, we may have specified incorrect
primary key. In such case, we need to drop the existing
primary key of the table and add a new primary key.
Syntax:
ALTER TABLE table_name DROP PRIMARY KEY;
To remove primary key of table GUARDIAN (Table 8.4),
we write the following MySQL statement:
mysql> ALTER TABLE GUARDIAN DROP PRIMARY KEY;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.72 sec)
Records: 0 Duplicates: 0 Warnings: 0
Note: We have dropped primary key from GUARDIAN table, but
each table should have a primary key to maintain uniqueness.
Hence, we have to use ADD command to specify primary key for
the GUARDIAN table as shown in earlier examples.

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Introduction to Structured Query Language (SQL) 153

8.4.5 DROP Statement Notes

Sometimes a table in a database or the database itself
needs to be removed. We can use DROP statement to
remove a database or a table permanently from the
system. However, one should be very cautious while
using this statement as it cannot be undone.
Syntax to drop a table:
DROP TABLE table_name;
Syntax to drop a database:
DROP DATABASE database_name;

Cautions:
1) Using the Drop statement to remove a database will
ultimately remove all the tables within it.
2) DROP statement will remove the tables or database
created by you. Hence you may apply DROP statement at
the end of the chapter.

8.5 SQL for Data Manipulation

In the previous section, we created the database
StudentAttendance having three relations STUDENT,
GUARDIAN and ATTENDANCE. When we create a table,
only its structure is created but the table has no data.
To populate records in the table, INSERT statement is
used. Similarly, table records can be deleted or updated
using SQL data manipulation statements.
Data Manipulation using a database means either
retrieval (access) of existing data, insertion of new data,
removal of existing data or modification of existing data
in the database.
8.5.1 INSERTION of Records
INSERT INTO statement is used to insert new records in
a table. Its syntax is:
INSERT INTO tablename
VALUES(value 1, value 2,....);
Here, value 1 corresponds to attribute 1, value 2
corresponds to attribute 2 and so on. Note that we need
not to specify attribute names in insert statement if
there are exactly same number of values in the INSERT
statement as the total number of attributes in the table.
Caution: While populating records in a table with foreign
key, ensure that records in referenced tables are already
populated.

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Let us insert some records in the StudentAttendance

database. We shall insert records in the GUARDIAN
table first as it does not have any foreign key. We are
going to insert the records given in Table 8.6.
Table 8.6 Records to be inserted into the GUARDIAN table
GUID GName GPhone GAddress
444444444444 Amit Ahuja 5711492685 G-35, Ashok Vihar, Delhi
111111111111 Baichung Bhutia 7110047139 Flat no. 5, Darjeeling Appt., Shimla
101010101010 Himanshu Shah 9818184855 26/77, West Patel Nagar, Ahmedabad
333333333333 Danny Dsouza S -13, Ashok Village, Daman
466444444666 Sujata P. 7802983674 HNO-13, B- block, Preet Vihar, Madurai

The below statement inserts the first record in the

table.
mysql> INSERT INTO GUARDIAN
-> VALUES (444444444444, 'Amit Ahuja',
-> 5711492685, 'G-35,Ashok vihar, Delhi' );
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.01 sec)
We can use the SQL statement SELECT * from table_
name to view the inserted records. The SELECT statement
will be explained in next section.
mysql> SELECT * from GUARDIAN;
+--------------+-----------------+------------+-------------------------------+
| GUID | GName | Gphone | GAddress |
+--------------+-----------------+------------+-------------------------------+
| 444444444444 | Amit Ahuja | 5711492685 | G-35, Ashok vihar, Delhi |
+--------------+-----------------+------------+-------------------------------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)
If we want to provide values only for some of the
attributes in a table (supposing other attributes having
NULL or any other default value), then we shall specify
the attribute name alongside each data value as shown
in the following syntax of INSERT INTO statement.
Syntax:
INSERT INTO tablename (column1, column2, ...)
VALUES (value1, value2, ...);
To insert the fourth record of Table 8.6 where GPhone
is not given, we need to insert values in the other three
fields (GPhone was set to NULL by default at the time
of table creation). In this case, we have to specify the
Activity 8.6 names of attributes in which we want to insert values.
The values must be given in the same order in which
Write SQL statements
to insert the remaining attributes are written in INSERT command.
3 rows of table 8.6 in mysql> INSERT INTO GUARDIAN(GUID, GName, GAddress)
table GUARDIAN. -> VALUES (333333333333, 'Danny Dsouza',

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Introduction to Structured Query Language (SQL) 155

-> 'S -13, Ashok Village, Daman' );

Query OK, 1 row affected (0.03 sec)
Note: Text and date values must be enclosed in ‘ ’ (single quotes).
mysql> SELECT * from GUARDIAN;
+--------------+--------------+------------+----------------------------------+
| GUID | GName | Gphone | GAddress |
+--------------+--------------+------------+----------------------------------+
| 333333333333 | Danny Dsouza | NULL | S -13, Ashok Village, Daman |
| 444444444444 | Amit Ahuja | 5711492685 | G-35, Ashok vihar, Delhi |
+--------------+--------------+------------+----------------------------------+
2 rows in set (0.00 sec)
Let us now insert the records given in Table 8.7 into
the STUDENT table.
Table 8.7 Records to be inserted into the STUDENT table
RollNumber SName SDateofBirth GUID
1 Atharv Ahuja 2003-05-15 444444444444
2 Daizy Bhutia 2002-02-28 111111111111
3 Taleem Shah 2002-02-28
4 John Dsouza 2003-08-18 333333333333
5 Ali Shah 2003-07-05 101010101010
6 Manika P. 2002-03-10 466444444666

To insert the first record of Table 8.7, we write the

following MySQL statement
mysql> INSERT INTO STUDENT
-> VALUES(1,'Atharv Ahuja','2003-05-15',
-> 444444444444);
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.11 sec)
OR
mysql> INSERT INTO STUDENT (RollNumber, SName,
-> SDateofBirth, GUID)
-> VALUES (1,'Atharv Ahuja','2003-05-15',
-> 444444444444);
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.02 sec)
mysql> SELECT * from STUDENT;
+------------+--------------+--------------+--------------+
| RollNumber | SName | SDateofBirth | GUID |
+------------+--------------+--------------+--------------+
| 1 | Atharv Ahuja | 2003-05-15 | 444444444444 |
+------------+--------------+--------------+--------------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)

Let us now insert the third record of Table 8.7 where

GUID is NULL. Recall that GUID is foreign key of this Recall that Date is
table and thus can take NULL value. Hence, we can put stored in “YYYY-MM-
DD” format.
NULL value for GUID and insert the record by using the
following statement:

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156 Informatics Practices – Class XI

mysql> INSERT INTO STUDENT

-> VALUES(3, 'Taleem Shah','2002-02-28',
-> NULL);
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.05 sec)

mysql> SELECT * from STUDENT;

+------------+--------------+--------------+--------------+
| RollNumber | SName | SDateofBirth | GUID |
+------------+--------------+--------------+--------------+
| 1 | Atharv Ahuja | 2003-05-15 | 444444444444 |
| 3 | Taleem Shah | 2002-02-28 | NULL |
+------------+--------------+--------------+--------------+
2 rows in set (0.00 sec)
We had to write NULL in the above MySQL statement
because when not giving the column names, we need
to give values for all the columns. Otherwise, we have
to give names of attributes along with the values if we
need to insert data only for certain attributes, as shown
in the next query:
Activity 8.7
mysql> INSERT INTO STUDENT (RollNumber, SName,
Write SQL statements -> SDateofBirth) VALUES (3, 'Taleem Shah','
to insert the remaining -> 2002-02-28');
4 rows of table 8.7 in Query OK, 1 row affected (0.05 sec)
table STUDENT. In the above statement we are informing DBMS
to insert the corresponding values for the mentioned
columns and GUID would be assigned NULL value.
mysql> SELECT * from STUDENT;
+------------+--------------+--------------+--------------+
| RollNumber | SName | SDateofBirth | GUID |
+------------+--------------+--------------+--------------+
| 1 | Atharv Ahuja | 2003-05-15 | 444444444444 |
| 3 | Taleem Shah | 2002-02-28 | NULL |
+------------+--------------+--------------+--------------+
2 rows in set (0.00 sec)

8.6 SQL for Data Query

Think and Reflect
• Which of the above
So far we have learnt how to create database as well
syntax should be as to store and manipulate data. We are interested to
used when we are store data in a database as it is easier to retrieve data
not sure of the order in future from databases in whatever way we want.
(with respect to the The Structured Query Language (SQL) has efficient
column) in which
the values are to be
mechanisms to retrieve data stored in multiple tables
inserted in the table? in a MySQL database (or any other RDBMS). The
• Can we insert two
user enters the SQL commands called queries where
records with the the specific requirements for data to be retrieved are
same roll number? provided. The SQL statement SELECT is used to retrieve
data from the tables in a database and is also called
query statement.

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Introduction to Structured Query Language (SQL) 157

8.6.1 SELECT Statement

The SQL statement SELECT is used to retrieve data from
the tables in a database and the output is also displayed
in tabular form.
Syntax:
SELECT attribute1, attribute2, ...
FROM table_name
WHERE condition
Here, attribute1, attribute2, ... are the column names
of the table table_name from which we want to retrieve
data. The FROM clause is always written with SELECT
clause as it specifies the name of the table from which
data is to be retrieved. The WHERE clause is optional and
is used to retrieve data that meet specified condition(s).
Example 8.2 To display the name and date of birth of student
with roll number 2, we write the following query:

mysql> SELECT SName, SDateofBirth

-> FROM STUDENT
-> WHERE RollNumber = 1;
+--------------+--------------+
| SName | SDateofBirth |
+--------------+--------------+ Think and Reflect
| Atharv Ahuja | 2003-05-15 | Can you think of
+--------------+--------------+
examples from daily
1 row in set (0.03 sec)
life where storing
8.6.2 QUERYING using Database OFFICE and querying data
in a database can be
Different organisations maintain databases to helpful?
store data in the form of tables. Let us consider the
database OFFICE of an organisation that has many
related tables like EMPLOYEE, DEPARTMENT and
so on. Every EMPLOYEE in the database is assigned
to a DEPARTMENT and his/her Department number
(DeptId) is stored as a foreign key in the table EMPLOYEE.
Let us consider some data for the table ‘EMPLOYEE’ as
shown in Table 8.8 and apply the SELECT statement to
retrieve data:
Table 8.8 EMPLOYEE
EmpNo Ename Salary Bonus Deptld
101 Aaliya 10000 234 D02
102 Kritika 60000 123 D01
103 Shabbir 45000 566 D01
104 Gurpreet 19000 565 D04
105 Joseph 34000 875 D03

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158 Informatics Practices – Class XI

Notes 106 Sanya 48000 695 D02

107 Vergese 15000 D01
108 Nachaobi 29000 D05
109 Daribha 42000 D04
110 Tanya 50000 467 D05

(A) Retrieve selected columns

The following query displays employee numbers of all
the employees:
mysql> SELECT EmpNo
-> FROM EMPLOYEE;
+-------+
| EmpNo |
+-------+
| 101 |
| 102 |
| 103 |
| 104 |
| 105 |
| 106 |
| 107 |
| 108 |
| 109 |
| 110 |
+-------+
10 rows in set (0.41 sec)
To display the employee number and employee name
of all the employees, we write the following query:
mysql> SELECT EmpNo, Ename
-> FROM EMPLOYEE;
+-------+----------+
| EmpNo | Ename |
+-------+----------+
| 101 | Aaliya |
| 102 | Kritika |
| 103 | Shabbir |
| 104 | Gurpreet |
| 105 | Joseph |
| 106 | Sanya |
| 107 | Vergese |
| 108 | Nachaobi |
| 109 | Daribha |
| 110 | Tanya |
+-------+----------+
10 rows in set (0.00 sec)
(B) Renaming of columns
In case we want to rename any column while displaying
the output, we can do so by using alias 'AS' in the
query as:
Display Employee name as Name in the output for
all the employees.
mysql> SELECT EName AS Name

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Introduction to Structured Query Language (SQL) 159

-> FROM EMPLOYEE; Notes

+----------+
| Name |
+----------+
| Aaliya |
| Kritika |
| Shabbir |
| Gurpreet |
| Joseph |
| Sanya |
| Vergese |
| Nachaobi |
| Daribha |
| Tanya |
+----------+
10 rows in set (0.00 sec)

Example 8.3 Display names of all employees along with their

annual salary (Salary*12). While displaying query result,
rename EName as Name.
mysql> SELECT EName AS Name, Salary*12
-> FROM EMPLOYEE;
+----------+-----------+
| Name | Salary*12 |
+----------+-----------+
| Aaliya | 120000 |
| Kritika | 720000 |
| Shabbir | 540000 |
| Gurpreet | 228000 |
| Joseph | 408000 |
| Sanya | 576000 |
| Vergese | 180000 |
| Nachaobi | 348000 |
| Daribha | 504000 |
| Tanya | 600000 |
+----------+-----------+
10 rows in set (0.02 sec)
Observe that in the output, Salary*12 is displayed as
the column name for the annual salary column. In the
output table, we can use alias to rename that column as
Annual Salary as shown below:
mysql> SELECT Ename AS Name, Salary*12 AS
-> 'Annual Salary'
-> FROM EMPLOYEE;
+----------+---------------+
| Name | Annual Salary |
+----------+---------------+
| Aaliya | 120000 |
| Kritika | 720000 |
| Shabbir | 540000 |
| Gurpreet | 228000 |
| Joseph | 408000 |
| Sanya | 576000 |
| Vergese | 180000 |
| Nachaobi | 348000 |
| Daribha | 504000 |
| Tanya | 600000 |
+----------+---------------+
10 rows in set (0.00 sec)

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160 Informatics Practices – Class XI

Notes Note:
i) Annual Salary will not be added as a new column in the
database table. It is just for displaying the output of the
query.
ii) If an aliased column name has space as in the case of Annual
Salary, it should be enclosed in quotes as 'Annual Salary'.
(C) DISTINCT Clause
By default, SQL shows all the data retrieved through
query as output. However, there can be duplicate values.
The SELECT statement when combined with DISTINCT
clause, returns records without repetition (distinct
records). For example, while retrieving employee’s
department number, there can be duplicate values as
many employees are assigned to same department. To
display unique department number for all the employees,
we use DISTINCT as shown below:
mysql> SELECT DISTINCT DeptId
-> FROM EMPLOYEE;
+--------+
| DeptId |
+--------+
| D02 |
| D01 |
| D04 |
| D03 |
| D05 |
+--------+
5 rows in set (0.03 sec)
(D) WHERE Clause
The WHERE clause is used to retrieve data that meet
some specified conditions. In the OFFICE database,
more than one employee can have the same salary. To
display distinct salaries of the employees working in the
department number D01, we write the following query
in which the condition to select the employee whose
department number is D01 is specified using the WHERE
clause:
mysql> SELECT DISTINCT Salary
-> FROM EMPLOYEE
-> WHERE Deptid='D01';
As the column DeptId is of string type, its values are
enclosed in quotes ('D01').
+--------+
| Salary |
+--------+
| 60000 |
| 45000 |
| 15000 |
+--------+
3 rows in set (0.02 sec)

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Introduction to Structured Query Language (SQL) 161

In the above example, we have used = operator in

WHERE clause. We can also use other relational operators
(<, <=, >, >=, !=) to specify conditions. The logical
operators AND, OR, and NOT are used with WHERE clause
to combine multiple conditions.
Example 8.4 Display all the employees who are earning more
than 5000 and work in department with DeptId D04.
mysql> SELECT *
-> FROM EMPLOYEE
-> WHERE Salary > 5000 AND DeptId = 'D04';
+-------+----------+--------+-------+--------+
| EmpNo | Ename | Salary | Bonus | DeptId |
+-------+----------+--------+-------+--------+
| 104 | Gurpreet | 19000 | 565 | D04 |
| 109 | Daribha | 42000 | NULL | D04 |
+-------+----------+--------+-------+--------+
2 rows in set (0.00 sec)

Example 8.5 The following query displays records of all the Think and Reflect
employees except Aaliya. What will happen if
mysql> SELECT * in the above query
-> FROM EMPLOYEE we write “Aaliya” as
-> WHERE NOT Ename = 'Aaliya'; “AALIYA” or “aaliya”
+-------+----------+--------+-------+--------+ or “AaLIYA”? Will the
| EmpNo | Ename | Salary | Bonus | DeptId | query generate the same
+-------+----------+--------+-------+--------+ output or an error?
| 102 | Kritika | 60000 | 123 | D01 |
| 103 | Shabbir | 45000 | 566 | D01 |
| 104 | Gurpreet | 19000 | 565 | D04 |
| 105 | Joseph | 34000 | 875 | D03 |
| 106 | Sanya | 48000 | 695 | D02 |
| 107 | Vergese | 15000 | NULL | D01 |
| 108 | Nachaobi | 29000 | NULL | D05 |
| 109 | Daribha | 42000 | NULL | D04 |
| 110 | Tanya | 50000 | 467 | D05 |
+-------+----------+--------+-------+--------+
9 rows in set (0.00 sec)
Example 8.6 The following query displays name and
department number of all those employees who are earning Activity 8.8
salary between 20000 and 50000 (both values inclusive). Compare the output
mysql> SELECT Ename, DeptId produced by the query
-> FROM EMPLOYEE in example 8.6 and
-> WHERE Salary>=20000 AND Salary<=50000; the following query
+----------+--------+ and differentiate
| Ename | DeptId | between the OR and AND
+----------+--------+ operators.
| Shabbir | D01 | SELECT *
| Joseph | D03 | FROM EMPLOYEE
| Sanya | D02 | WHERE Salary > 5000 OR
| Nachaobi | D05 | DeptId= 20;
| Daribha | D04 |
| Tanya | D05 |
+----------+--------+
6 rows in set (0.00 sec)

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162 Informatics Practices – Class XI

Notes The above query defines a range that can also be

checked using a comparison operator BETWEEN.
mysql> SELECT Ename, DeptId
-> FROM EMPLOYEE
-> WHERE Salary BETWEEN 20000 AND 50000;
+----------+--------+
| Ename | DeptId |
+----------+--------+
| Shabbir | D01 |
| Joseph | D03 |
| Sanya | D02 |
| Nachaobi | D05 |
| Daribha | D04 |
| Tanya | D05 |
+----------+--------+
6 rows in set (0.03 sec)
Note: The BETWEEN operator defines the range of values in which
the column value must fall into, to make the condition true.
Example 8.7 The following query displays details of all the
employees who are working either in DeptId D01, D02 or
D04.
mysql> SELECT *
-> FROM EMPLOYEE
-> WHERE DeptId = 'D01' OR DeptId = 'D02' OR
-> DeptId = 'D04';
+-------+----------+--------+-------+--------+
| EmpNo | Ename | Salary | Bonus | DeptId |
+-------+----------+--------+-------+--------+
| 101 | Aaliya | 10000 | 234 | D02 |
| 102 | Kritika | 60000 | 123 | D01 |
| 103 | Shabbir | 45000 | 566 | D01 |
| 104 | Gurpreet | 19000 | 565 | D04 |
| 106 | Sanya | 48000 | 695 | D02 |
| 107 | Vergese | 15000 | NULL | D01 |
| 109 | Daribha | 42000 | NULL | D04 |
+-------+----------+--------+-------+--------+
7 rows in set (0.00 sec)
(E) MEMBERSHIP OPERATOR IN
The IN operator compares a value with a set of values
and returns true if the value belongs to that set. The
above query can be rewritten using IN operator as
shown below:
mysql> SELECT *
-> FROM EMPLOYEE
-> WHERE DeptId IN ('D01', 'D02' , 'D04');
+-------+----------+--------+-------+--------+
| EmpNo | Ename | Salary | Bonus | DeptId |
+-------+----------+--------+-------+--------+
| 101 | Aaliya | 10000 | 234 | D02 |
| 102 | Kritika | 60000 | 123 | D01 |
| 103 | Shabbir | 45000 | 566 | D01 |
| 104 | Gurpreet | 19000 | 565 | D04 |
| 106 | Sanya | 48000 | 695 | D02 |
| 107 | Vergese | 15000 | NULL | D01 |
| 109 | Daribha | 42000 | NULL | D04 |
+-------+----------+--------+-------+--------+
7 rows in set (0.00 sec)

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Introduction to Structured Query Language (SQL) 163

Example 8.8 The following query displays details of all the Notes
employees except those working in department number D01
or D02.
mysql> SELECT *
-> FROM EMPLOYEE
-> WHERE DeptId NOT IN('D01', 'D02');
+-------+----------+--------+-------+--------+
| EmpNo | Ename | Salary | Bonus | DeptId |
+-------+----------+--------+-------+--------+
| 104 | Gurpreet | 19000 | 565 | D04 |
| 105 | Joseph | 34000 | 875 | D03 |
| 108 | Nachaobi | 29000 | NULL | D05 |
| 109 | Daribha | 42000 | NULL | D04 |
| 110 | Tanya | 50000 | 467 | D05 |
+-------+----------+--------+-------+--------+
5 rows in set (0.00 sec)
Note: Here we need to combine NOT with IN as we want to retrieve
all records except with DeptId D01 and D02.
(F) ORDER BY Clause
ORDER BY clause is used to display data in an ordered
(arranged) form with respect to a specified column. By
default, ORDER BY displays records in ascending order of
the specified column’s values. To display the records in
descending order, the DESC (means descending) keyword
needs to be written with that column.
Example 8.9 The following query displays details of all the
employees in ascending order of their salaries.
mysql> SELECT *
-> FROM EMPLOYEE
-> ORDER BY Salary;
+-------+----------+--------+-------+--------+
| EmpNo | Ename | Salary | Bonus | DeptId |
+-------+----------+--------+-------+--------+
| 101 | Aaliya | 10000 | 234 | D02 |
| 107 | Vergese | 15000 | NULL | D01 |
| 104 | Gurpreet | 19000 | 565 | D04 |
| 108 | Nachaobi | 29000 | NULL | D05 |
| 105 | Joseph | 34000 | 875 | D03 |
| 109 | Daribha | 42000 | NULL | D04 |
| 103 | Shabbir | 45000 | 566 | D01 |
| 106 | Sanya | 48000 | 695 | D02 |
| 110 | Tanya | 50000 | 467 | D05 |
| 102 | Kritika | 60000 | 123 | D01 |
+-------+----------+--------+-------+--------+
10 rows in set (0.05 sec)

Example 8.10 The following query displays details of all the

employees in descending order of their salaries.
mysql> SELECT *
-> FROM EMPLOYEE
-> ORDER BY Salary DESC;

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164 Informatics Practices – Class XI

+-------+----------+--------+-------+--------+
| EmpNo | Ename | Salary | Bonus | DeptId |
+-------+----------+--------+-------+--------+
| 102 | Kritika | 60000 | 123 | D01 |
| 110 | Tanya | 50000 | 467 | D05 |
| 106 | Sanya | 48000 | 695 | D02 |
| 103 | Shabbir | 45000 | 566 | D01 |
| 109 | Daribha | 42000 | NULL | D04 |
| 105 | Joseph | 34000 | 875 | D03 |
| 108 | Nachaobi | 29000 | NULL | D05 |
| 104 | Gurpreet | 19000 | 565 | D04 |
| 107 | Vergese | 15000 | NULL | D01 |
| 101 | Aaliya | 10000 | 234 | D02 |
+-------+----------+--------+-------+--------+
10 rows in set (0.00 sec)
(G) Handling NULL Values
SQL supports a special value called NULL to represent
a missing or unknown value. For example, the village
column in a table called address will have no value for
cities. Hence, NULL is used to represent such unknown
values. It is important to note that NULL is different
from 0 (zero). Also, any arithmetic operation performed
with NULL value gives NULL. For example: 5 + NULL =
NULL because NULL is unknown hence the result is also
unknown. In order to check for NULL value in a column,
Activity 8.9
we use IS NULL.
Execute the following
two queries and find Example 8.11 The following query displays details of all
out what will happen if those employees who have not been given a bonus. This
we specify two columns implies that the bonus column will be blank.
in the ORDER BY clause: mysql> SELECT *
-> FROM EMPLOYEE
SELECT *
-> WHERE Bonus IS NULL;
FROM EMPLOYEE
ORDER BY Salary, +-------+----------+--------+-------+--------+
Bonus; | EmpNo | Ename | Salary | Bonus | DeptId |
+-------+----------+--------+-------+--------+
SELECT *
| 107 | Vergese | 15000 | NULL | D01 |
| 108 | Nachaobi | 29000 | NULL | D05 |
FROM EMPLOYEE | 109 | Daribha | 42000 | NULL | D04 |
ORDER BY Salary,Bonus +-------+----------+--------+-------+--------+
desc; 3 rows in set (0.00 sec)
Example 8.12 The following query displays names of all the
employees who have been given a bonus. This implies that
the bonus column will not be blank.
mysql> SELECT EName
-> FROM EMPLOYEE
-> WHERE Bonus IS NOT NULL;
+----------+
| EName |
+----------+
| Aaliya |
| Kritika |
| Shabbir |
| Gurpreet |
| Joseph |
| Sanya |
| Tanya |
+----------+
7 rows in set (0.00 sec)

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Introduction to Structured Query Language (SQL) 165

(H) Substring pattern matching Notes

Many a times we come across situations where we don’t
want to query by matching exact text or value. Rather, we
are interested to find matching of only a few characters
or values in column values. For example, to find out
names starting with ‘T’ or to find out pin codes starting
with ‘60’. This is called substring pattern matching.
We cannot match such patterns using = operator as
we are not looking for exact match. SQL provides LIKE
operator that can be used with WHERE clause to search
for a specified pattern in a column.
The LIKE operator makes use of the following two
wild card characters:
• % (percent)— used to represent zero, one, or multiple
characters
• _ (underscore)— used to represent a single character

Example 8.13 The following query displays details of all those

employees whose name starts with 'K'.
mysql> SELECT *
-> FROM EMPLOYEE
-> WHERE Ename LIKE 'K%';

+-------+---------+--------+-------+--------+
| EmpNo | Ename | Salary | Bonus | DeptId |
+-------+---------+--------+-------+--------+
| 102 | Kritika | 60000 | 123 | D01 |
+-------+---------+--------+-------+--------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)

Example 8.14 The following query displays details of all

those employees whose name ends with 'a'.
mysql> SELECT *
-> FROM EMPLOYEE
-> WHERE Ename LIKE '%a';
+-------+---------+--------+-------+--------+
| EmpNo | Ename | Salary | Bonus | DeptId |
+-------+---------+--------+-------+--------+
| 101 | Aaliya | 10000 | 234 | D02 |
| 102 | Kritika | 60000 | 123 | D01 |
| 106 | Sanya | 48000 | 695 | D02 |
| 109 | Daribha | 42000 | NULL | D04 |
| 110 | Tanya | 50000 | 467 | D05 |
+-------+---------+--------+-------+--------+
5 rows in set (0.00 sec)

Example 8.15 The following query displays details of all

those employees whose name consists of exactly 5 letters
and starts with any letter but has ‘ANYA’ after that.
mysql> SELECT *

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166 Informatics Practices – Class XI

-> FROM EMPLOYEE

-> WHERE Ename LIKE '_ANYA';
Think and Reflect +-------+-------+--------+-------+--------+
| EmpNo | Ename | Salary | Bonus | DeptId |
When we type first letter
+-------+-------+--------+-------+--------+
of a contact name in | 106 | Sanya | 48000 | 695 | D02 |
our contact list in our | 110 | Tanya | 50000 | 467 | D05 |
mobile phones all the +-------+-------+--------+-------+--------+
names containing that 2 rows in set (0.00 sec)
character are displayed.
Can you relate SQL Example 8.16 The following query displays names of all the
statement with the employees containing 'se' as a substring in name.
process? List other real mysql> SELECT Ename
life situations where you -> FROM EMPLOYEE
can visualize an SQL -> WHERE Ename LIKE '%se%';
statement in operation. +---------+
| Ename |
+---------+
| Joseph |
| Vergese |
+---------+
2 rows in set (0.00 sec)

Example 8.17 The following query displays names of all

employees containing 'a' as the second character.
mysql> SELECT EName
-> FROM EMPLOYEE
-> WHERE Ename LIKE '_a%';
+----------+
| EName |
+----------+
| Aaliya |
| Sanya |
| Nachaobi |
| Daribha |
| Tanya |
+----------+
5 rows in set (0.00 sec)

8.7 Data Updation and Deletion

Updation and deletion of data are also the parts of SQL
data manipulation. In this section, we are going to apply
these two data manipulation methods.
8.7.1 Data Updation
We may need to make changes in the value(s) of one or
more columns of existing records in a table. For example,
we may require some changes in address, phone number
or spelling of name, etc. The UPDATE statement is used to
make such modifications in the existing data.
Syntax:
UPDATE table_name
SET attribute1 = value1, attribute2 = value2, ...

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Introduction to Structured Query Language (SQL) 167

WHERE condition;
The STUDENT Table 8.7 has NULL value for GUID
for student with roll number 3. Also, suppose students
with roll numbers 3 and 5 are siblings. So, in STUDENT
table, we need to fill the GUID value for student with
roll number 3 as 101010101010. In order to update or
change GUID of a particular row (record), we need to
specify that record using WHERE clause, as shown below:
mysql> UPDATE STUDENT
-> SET GUID = 101010101010
-> WHERE RollNumber = 3;
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.06 sec)
Rows matched: 1 Changed: 1 Warnings: 0
We can then verify the updated data using the
statement SELECT * FROM STUDENT.
Caution : If we miss the where clause in the UPDATE statement then
the GUID of all the records will be changed to 101010101010.
We can also update values for more than one column
using the UPDATE statement. Suppose, the guardian
(Table 8.6) with GUID 466444444666 has requested to
change the Address to 'WZ - 68, Azad Avenue, Bijnour,
MP' and Phone number to '9010810547'.
mysql> UPDATE GUARDIAN
-> SET GAddress = 'WZ - 68, Azad Avenue,
-> Bijnour, MP', GPhone = 9010810547
-> WHERE GUID = 466444444666;
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.06 sec)
Rows matched: 1 Changed: 1 Warnings: 0
mysql> SELECT * FROM GUARDIAN ;
+------------+---------------+----------+------------------------------------+
|GUID |GName |Gphone |GAddress |
+------------+---------------+----------+------------------------------------+
|444444444444|Amit Ahuja |5711492685|G-35, Ashok vihar, Delhi |
|111111111111|Baichung Bhutia|7110047139|Flat no. 5, Darjeeling Appt., Shimla|
|101010101010|Himanshu Shah |9818184855|26/77, West Patel Nagar, Ahmedabad |
|333333333333|Danny Dsouza |NULL |S -13, Ashok Village, Daman |
|466444444666|Sujata P. |9010810547|WZ - 68, Azad Avenue, Bijnour, MP |
+------------+---------------+----------+------------------------------------+
5 rows in set (0.00 sec)

8.7.2 Data Deletion

The DELETE statement is used to delete one or more
record(s) from a table.
Syntax:
DELETE FROM table_name
WHERE condition;

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168 Informatics Practices – Class XI

Suppose the student with roll number 2 has left the

school. We can use the following MySQL statement to
delete that record from the STUDENT table.
mysql> DELETE FROM STUDENT WHERE RollNumber = 2;
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.06 sec)

mysql> SELECT * FROM STUDENT ;

+------------+--------------+--------------+--------------+
| RollNumber | SName | SDateofBirth | GUID |
+------------+--------------+--------------+--------------+
| 1 | Atharv Ahuja | 2003-05-15 | 444444444444 |
| 3 | Taleem Shah | 2002-02-28 | 101010101010 |
| 4 | John Dsouza | 2003-08-18 | 333333333333 |
| 5 | Ali Shah | 2003-07-05 | 101010101010 |
| 6 | Manika P. | 2002-03-10 | 466444444666 |
+------------+--------------+--------------+--------------+
5 rows in set (0.00 sec)

Caution: Like UPDATE statement, we need to be careful to include

WHERE clause while using DELETE statement to delete records in a
table. Otherwise, all the records in the table will get deleted.

Summary
• Database is a collection of related tables. MySQL is a
‘relational’ DBMS. A table is a collection of rows and
columns, where each row is a record and columns
describe the feature of records.
• SQL is the standard language for most RDBMS.
SQL is case insensitive.
• CREATE DATABASE statement is used to create a new
database.
• USE statement is used for making the specified
database as active database.
• CREATE TABLE statement is used to create a table.
• Every attribute in a CREATE TABLE statement must
have a name and a datatype.
• ALTER TABLE statement is used to make changes in
the structure of a table like adding, removing or
changing datatype of column(s).
• The DESC statement with table name shows the
structure of the table.
• INSERT INTO statement is used to insert record(s) in
a table.
• UPDATE statement is used to modify existing data in
a table.
• DELETE statement is used to delete records in a table.

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Introduction to Structured Query Language (SQL) 169

• The SELECT statement is used to retrieve data from Notes

one or more database tables.
• SELECT * FROM table_name displays data from all
the attributes of that table.
• The WHERE clause is used to enforce condition(s) in
a query.
• DISTINCT clause is used to eliminate repetition and
display the values only once.
• The BETWEEN operator defines the range of values
inclusive of boundary values.
• The IN operator selects values that match any value
in the given list of values.
• NULL values can be tested using IS NULL and IS
NOT NULL.
• ORDER BY clause is used to display the result of an
SQL query in ascending or descending order with
respect to specified attribute values. The default is
ascending order.
• LIKE clause is used for pattern matching. % and _
are two wild card characters. The percent (%) symbol
is used to represent zero or more characters. The
underscore (_) symbol is used to represent a single
character.

Exercise
1. Match the following clauses with their respective
functions.
ALTER Insert the values in a table
UPDATE Restrictions on columns
DELETE Table definition
INSERT INTO Change the name of a column
CONSTRAINTS Update existing information in a table
DESC Delete an existing row from a table
CREATE Create a database

2. Choose appropriate answer with respect to the following

code snippet.
CREATE TABLE student (
name CHAR(30),

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170 Informatics Practices – Class XI

Notes student_id INT,

gender CHAR(1),
PRIMARY KEY (student_id)
);

a) What will be the degree of student table?

i) 30
ii) 1
iii) 3
iv) 4
b) What does ‘name’ represent in the above code snippet?
i) a table
ii) a row
iii) a column
iv) a database
c) What is true about the following SQL statement?
SelecT * fROM student;
i) Displays contents of table ‘student’
ii) Displays column names and contents of table
‘student’
iii) Results in error as improper case has been used
iv) Displays only the column names of table ‘student’
d) What will be the output of following query?
INSERT INTO student
VALUES (“Suhana”,109,’F’),
VALUES (“Rivaan”,102,’M’),
VALUES (“Atharv”,103,’M’),
VALUES (“Rishika”,105,’F’),
VALUES (“Garvit”,104,’M’),
VALUES (“Shaurya”,109,’M’);
i) Error
ii) No Error
iii) Depends on compiler
iv) Successful completion of the query
e) In the following query how many rows will be deleted?
DELETE student
WHERE student_id=109;
i) 1 row
ii) All the rows where student ID is equal to 109
iii) No row will be deleted
iv) 2 rows
3. Fill in the blanks:
a) declares that an index in one table is
related to that in another table.
i) Primary Key
ii) Foreign Key
iii) Composite Key
iv) Secondary Key
b) The symbol Asterisk (*) in a select query retrieves
____________.
i) All data from the table
ii) Data of primary key only

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Introduction to Structured Query Language (SQL) 171

iii) NULL data

iv) None of the mentioned
4. Consider the following MOVIE database and answer the
SQL queries based on it.
MovieID MovieName Category ReleaseDate ProductionCost BusinessCost
001 Hindi_Movie Musical 2018-04-23 124500 130000
002 Tamil_Movie Action 2016-05-17 112000 118000
003 English_Movie Horror 2017-08-06 245000 360000
004 Bengali_Movie Adventure 2017-01-04 72000 100000
005 Telugu_Movie Action - 100000 -
006 Punjabi_Movie Comedy - 30500 -

a) Retrieve movies information without mentioning their

column names.
b) List business done by the movies showing only
MovieID, MovieName and BusinessCost.
c) List the different categories of movies.
d) Find the net profit of each movie showing its ID, Name
and Net Profit.
(Hint: Net Profit = BusinessCost – ProductionCost)
Make sure that the new column name is labelled as
NetProfit. Is this column now a part of the MOVIE
relation. If no, then what name is coined for such
columns? What can you say about the profit of a
movie which has not yet released? Does your query
result show profit as zero?
e) List all movies with ProductionCost greater than
80,000 and less than 1,25,000 showing ID, Name
and ProductionCost.
f) List all movies which fall in the category of Comedy
or Action.
g) List the movies which have not been released yet.
5. Suppose your school management has decided to conduct
cricket matches between students of class XI and Class
XII. Students of each class are asked to join any one
of the four teams — Team Titan, Team Rockers, Team
Magnet and Team Hurricane. During summer vacations,
various matches will be conducted between these teams.
Help your sports teacher to do the following:
a) Create a database “Sports”.
b) Create a table “TEAM” with following considerations:
i) It should have a column TeamID for storing an
integer value between 1 to 9, which refers to
unique identification of a team.
ii) Each TeamID should have its associated name
(TeamName), which should be a string of length
not less than 10 characters.

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172 Informatics Practices – Class XI

c) Using table level constraint, make TeamID as primary

key.
d) Show the structure of the table TEAM using SQL
command.
e) As per the preferences of the students four teams
were formed as given below. Insert these four rows in
TEAM table:
Row 1: (1, Team Titan)
Row 2: (2, Team Rockers)
Row 3: (3, Team Magnet)
Row 4: (4, Team Hurricane)
f) Show the contents of the table TEAM.
g) Now create another table below. MATCH_DETAILS
and insert data as shown in table. Choose appropriate
domains and constraints for each attribute.
Table: MATCH_DETAILS
MatchID MatchDate FirstTeamID SecondTeamID FirstTeamScore SecondTeamScore
M1 2018-07-17 1 2 90 86
M2 2018-07-18 3 4 45 48
M3 2018-07-19 1 3 78 56
M4 2018-07-19 2 4 56 67
M5 2018-07-20 1 4 32 87
M6 2018-07-21 2 3 67 51

h) Use the foreign key constraint in the MATCH_

DETAILS table with reference to TEAM table so
that MATCH_DETAILS table records score of teams
existing in the TEAM table only.
6. Using the sports database containing two relations
(TEAM, MATCH_DETAILS), answer the following
relational algebra queries.
a) Retrieve the MatchID of all those matches where both
the teams have scored > 70.
b) Retrieve the MatchID of all those matches where
FirstTeam has scored < 70 but SecondTeam has
scored > 70.
c) Find out the MatchID and date of matches played by
Team 1 and won by it.
d) Find out the MatchID of matches played by Team 2
and not won by it.
e) In the TEAM relation, change the name of the relation
to T_DATA. Also change the attributes TeamID and
TeamName to T_ID and T_NAME respectively.
7. Differentiate between the following commands:
a) ALTER and UPDATE
b) DELETE and DROP

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Introduction to Structured Query Language (SQL) 173

8. Create a database called STUDENT_PROJECT having

the following tables. Choose appropriate data type and
apply necessary constraints.
Table: STUDENT
RollNo Name Stream Section RegistrationID

* The values in Stream column can be either Science, Commerce,

or Humanities.
* The values in Section column can be either I or II.

Table: PROJECT_ASSIGNED
RegistrationID ProjectID AssignDate

Table: PROJECT
ProjectID ProjectName SubmissionDate TeamSize GuideTeacher

a) Populate these tables with appropriate data.

b) Write SQL queries for the following.
c) Find the names of students in Science Stream.
d) What will be the primary keys of the three tables?
e) What are the foreign keys of the three relations?
f) Finds names of all the students studying in class
‘Commerce stream’ and are guided by same teacher,
even if they are assigned different projects.
9. An organization ABC maintains a database EMP-
DEPENDENT to record the following details about its
employees and their dependents.
EMPLOYEE(AadhaarNo, Name, Address, Department,
EmpID)
DEPENDENT(EmpID, DependentName, Relationship)
Use the EMP-DEPENDENT database to answer the following
SQL queries:
a) Find the names of employees with their dependent
names.
b) Find employee details working in a department, say,
‘PRODUCTION’.
c) Find employee names having no dependent
d) Find names of employees working in a department,
say, ‘SALES’ and having exactly two dependents.
10. A shop called Wonderful Garments that sells school
uniforms maintain a database SCHOOL_UNIFORM as shown
below. It consisted of two relations — UNIFORM and
PRICE. They made UniformCode as the primary key for
UNIFORM relation. Further, they used UniformCode and
Size as composite keys for PRICE relation. By analysing
the database schema and database state, specify SQL
queries to rectify the following anomalies.

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174 Informatics Practices – Class XI

a) The PRICE relation has an attribute named Price. In

order to avoid confusion, write SQL query to change
the name of the relation PRICE to COST.
UNIFORM PRICE

UCode UName UColor UCode Size Price

1 Shirt White 1 M 500
2 Pant Grey 1 L 580
3 Skirt Grey 1 XL 620
4 Tie Blue 2 M 810

5 Socks Blue 2 L 890

6 Belt Blue 2 XL 940

3 M 770
3 L 830
3 XL 910
4 S 150
4 L 170
5 S 180
5 L 210
6 M 110
6 L 140
6 XL 160

b) M/S Wonderful Garments also keeps handkerchiefs

of red color, medium size of `100 each. Insert this
record in COST table.
c) When you used the above query to insert data,
you were able to enter the values for handkerchief
without entering its details in the UNIFORM
relation. Make a provision so that the data can be
entered in COST table only if it is already there in
UNIFROM table.
d) Further, you should be able to assign a new UCode
to an item only if it has a valid UName. Write a
query to add appropriate constraint to the SCHOOL_
UNIFORM database.
e) ALTER table to add the constraint that price of an
item is always greater than zero.

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