Difference and symmetric difference in Python - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Difference and symmetric difference

📖 Scenario: You are organizing two groups of friends who like different sports. You want to find out who likes only one sport and who likes both.

🎯 Goal: Build a program that finds the difference and symmetric difference between two sets of friends.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create two sets with exact friend names

Create a variable for the difference of the two sets

Create a variable for the symmetric difference of the two sets

Print the results exactly as instructed

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Finding differences and unique members between groups is useful in event planning, marketing, and social networks.

💼 Career

Understanding set operations helps in data analysis, database queries, and software development tasks involving collections.

1

Create two sets of friends

Create a set called basketball_fans with these exact names: 'Alice', 'Bob', 'Charlie'. Then create another set called soccer_fans with these exact names: 'Bob', 'David', 'Eve'.

Python

# Create the sets basketball_fans and soccer_fans
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use curly braces {} to create sets and separate names with commas.

2

Create difference variable

Create a variable called only_basketball that holds the difference between basketball_fans and soccer_fans using the - operator.

Python

basketball_fans = {'Alice', 'Bob', 'Charlie'}
soccer_fans = {'Bob', 'David', 'Eve'}
# Create only_basketball as basketball_fans minus soccer_fans
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use the minus sign - between the two sets to get the difference.

3

Create symmetric difference variable

Create a variable called either_but_not_both that holds the symmetric difference between basketball_fans and soccer_fans using the ^ operator.

Python

basketball_fans = {'Alice', 'Bob', 'Charlie'}
soccer_fans = {'Bob', 'David', 'Eve'}
only_basketball = basketball_fans - soccer_fans
# Create either_but_not_both as the symmetric difference of basketball_fans and soccer_fans
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use the caret ^ operator to find the symmetric difference.

4

Print the results

Print the variables only_basketball and either_but_not_both exactly as shown: print("Only basketball fans:", only_basketball) and print("Fans of either sport but not both:", either_but_not_both).

Python

basketball_fans = {'Alice', 'Bob', 'Charlie'}
soccer_fans = {'Bob', 'David', 'Eve'}
only_basketball = basketball_fans - soccer_fans
either_but_not_both = basketball_fans ^ soccer_fans
# Print the results
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use two print statements with the exact text and variables.