[Groundhog]

My next problem was something called scope - which I am still getting my head around. I wrote a function that calculated the top jumper for each side and assigned it to a variable. The problem was that, after the function finishes, that variable is lost to me and I couldn't access it again.

One way around it was to use the 'global' statement as I did below. I was positive that that was not the best way to do this. I don't know a great deal about OOP, but I know that keeping objects separate and independent of each other is the fundamental 'best practice', and I think this approach violates that. Then I discovered the 'return' statement, which seems the better workaround.

I apologize in advance to anyone with any kind of programming experience as I'm sure the following is probably the least efficient way possible to generate these calculations:

def TopJumper(home_5_jump, home_5_hgt, home_4_jump, home_4_hgt, away_5_jump,
              away_5_hgt, away_4_jump, away_4_hgt):
    home_5_jump_abl = (home_5_jump + home_5_hgt)
    home_4_jump_abl = (home_4_jump + home_4_hgt)
    away_5_jump_abl = (away_5_jump + away_5_hgt)
    away_4_jump_abl = (away_4_jump + away_4_hgt)
    #global hometopjumper
    #global awaytopjumper

    if home_5_jump_abl > home_4_jump_abl:
        hometopjumper = "PlayerHome5"
    elif home_4_jump_abl > home_5_jump_abl:
        hometopjumper = "PlayerHome4"
    else:
        hometopjumper = "PlayerHome5"

    if away_5_jump_abl > away_4_jump_abl:
        awaytopjumper = "PlayerAway5"
    elif away_4_jump_abl > away_5_jump_abl:
        awaytopjumper = "PlayerAway4"
    else:
        awaytopjumper = "PlayerAway5"

    return hometopjumper, awaytopjumper

I then run the function, feeding into it the attributes stored in my player classes earlier, which gives me a variable named TopJumperResults with the best jumper for the home and road team:

TopJumperResults = TopJumper(PlayerHome5.jump, PlayerHome5.height,
                             PlayerHome4.jump, PlayerHome4.height,
                             PlayerAway5.jump, PlayerAway5.height,
                             PlayerAway4.jump, PlayerAway4.height)

Now, to have them square off...