Making Decisions

To make proper decisions in programming, as in create different pathways to our instructions, it requires the following:

1. Creating Conditions

2. Evaluating Conditions

3. Events to occur depending on if a condition is true.

To simulate the following requirements, let's examine a movie theatre pricing situation.

// Movie Theatre Pricing

if you are an adult (17+), you pay $15.50.

if you are a child (17 and under), you pay $10.

if you are a senior (65+), you pay $12.

If we as a programmer were to create a price checking program , we would have to ask the user for their age, and the program should be able to generate with an appropriate pricing.

Our Conditions

There are 3 conditions in this scenario:

1. Are they a senior?

2. Are they an adult?

3. Are they a child?

Evaluation of the Condition

To determine which scenario they fall into, we must compare their age against our threshold.

1. They are a senior if their age is 65 or over

2. They are an adult if they are not a senior and their age is 18 or over

3. They are a child if they are not a senior or an adult, and their age must be 17 or under

Events to Occur based on a Condition Being true

Possible Event #1 -> Their age is 65 or over; therefore, we output price of $12.00

Possible Event #2 -> Their age 18 to 64 inclusively; therefore, we output price of $15.50

Possible Event #3 -> Their age is 17 and under; therefore, we output price of $10.00

How do we do this in Programming?

Conditions are created with if statements.

We compare values with comparison operators

We can combine multiple situations with logical operators

Both comparison and logical operators result to Boolean values (true or false) which forces the if statements to trigger their event code only if their related conditions are true.