Making Choices

Size Estimates by Name


This is a follow up to Use and Modify.

To make it even easier to work with your dinosaur size estimation functions you decide to create a function that lets you specify which dinosaur group you need to estimate the size of by name and then have the function automatically choose the right parameters.

Create a new function get_mass_from_length_by_name() that takes two arguments, the length and the name of the dinosaur group. Inside this function use if/else if/else statements to check to see if the name is one of the following values and if so set a and b to the appropriate values.

If the name is not any of these values set a and b to NA.

Once the function has assigned a and b have it run get_mass_from_length() with the appropriate values and return the estimated mass.

Run the function for:

  1. A Stegosauria that is 10 meters long.
  2. A Theropoda that is 8 meters long.
  3. A Sauropoda that is 12 meters long.
  4. A Ankylosauria that is 13 meters long.

Challenge (optional): If the name is not one of values that have a and b values print out a message that it doesn’t know how to convert that group that includes that groups name in a message like “No known estimation for Ankylosauria”. (the function paste will be helpful here). Doing this successfully will modify your answer to (4).

Challenge (optional): Change your function so that it uses two different values of a and b for Stegosauria. When Stegosauria is greater than 8 meters long use the equation above. When it is less than 8 meters long use a = 8.5 and b = 2.8. Run the function for a Stegosauria that is 6 meters long.

[click here for output]