def scholarship_1(amount=15000, skip=4, ir=0.06, sr=0.03, sri=1.03, it=10): """Calculate and output the scholarship payouts (among other things) given an interest rate and a scholarship rate function. amount the initial amount of the scholarship skip the number of years to skip before the first payment ir yearly interest rate sr amount to pay out on the first year of scholarship payment sri amount to increase the initial scholarship payment by it number of iterations of payments to do """ total = amount * ((1+ir)**(skip-1)) scholarship = sr * total # we start from *just* before the fourth year's interest earnings for n in range(0, it): interest = ir * total total = total + interest - scholarship print "scholarship: %f\ntotal: %f\n\n" % (scholarship, total) # for next loop scholarship = sri * scholarshipif __name__ == "__main__": print "method one: interest calculation, then scholarship, then deduct.\n" # want: 535.957200 #scholarship_1(it=2) scholarship_1(it=10, sr=0.08, sri=1.08)