You hail a black cab in London: "42 Python Street, please" and you get in the cab
This journey will meander through Python mappings and sequences…
but first, how much do you know about London cabbies, as London's taxi drivers are called?
"The Knowledge" is the brilliantly-named test London taxi drivers must pass before they can drive one of the iconic black cabs
A research study found that part of the brain used heavily in memory and spatial navigation is larger for London cabbies compared to a control group
Why does this matter? It doesn't really, but I said it anyway…
When you ask a cab driver to go to "42 Python Street", the name "Python Street" acts as a key in a dictionary
The cabbie visualises the street's geographical location in relation to the current location
The mapping between the street name and the visualisation of the geographical location happens automatically in the taxi driver's brain
But when the cab gets to Python Street, the cab driver treats the row of houses as a sequence. He needs to get to the 42nd one
In reality, the house numbers go up in steps of two since the odd numbers are on one side of the road and the even numbers on the other—but let's not let facts get in the way of a good analogy!
You can read more about the taxi driver, mappings and sequences in the article I published on The Python Coding Stack—you can follow the link shown on this cover image for the article
Stephen Gruppetta
@s_gruppetta_ct
Constantly looking for innovative ways to talk and write about Python • Mentoring learners • Writing about Python • Writing about technical writing
