Q.For the SMIS system extended in Chapter 6 let us do the following:
7.2 Add another user defined function to the above menu to check if the student has short attendance or not. The function should accept total number of working days in a month and check if the student is a defaulter by calculating his or her attendance using the formula: Count of days the student was present or the total number of working days. In case the attendance calculated is less than 78%, the function should return 1 indicating short attendance otherwise the function should return 0 indicating attendance is not short.

Attendance % = (days present ÷ total working days) × 100 (the stem's "or" is a misprint for "over"). The function returns 1 for short attendance (< 78%), else 0.

def shortAttendance(daysPresent, workingDays):
    attendance = (daysPresent / workingDays) * 100
    if attendance < 78:
        return 1      # defaulter - short attendance
    return 0          # attendance is not short

Add a menu option that reads the total working days (and days present) and reports:

if shortAttendance(present, working) == 1:
    print("ALERT: attendance is SHORT (below 78%)")
else: …

The idea. Because 7.1 made SMIS modular, adding a feature is now just one new function plus one menu line — that is the payoff of user-defined functions. Note the stem's formula text ("Count of days the student was present or the total number of working days") is a printing slip: the intended formula is the count of days present divided by the total working days, expressed as a percentage.

def shortAttendance(daysPresent, workingDays):
    """Return 1 if attendance is short (< 78%), else 0."""
    attendance = (daysPresent / workingDays) * 100
    print("Attendance:", round(attendance, 2), "%")
    if attendance < 78:
        return 1
    else:
        return 0

Wiring it into the menu of 7.1 (new option 3; Exit moves to 4):

        print("3. Check short attendance")
        ...
        elif choice == 3:
            working = int(input("Enter total number of working days in the month: "))
            present = int(input("Enter number of days the student was present: "))
            if shortAttendance(present, working) == 1:
                print("ALERT: the student is a DEFAULTER (attendance below 78%).")
            else:
                print("Attendance is not short.")

Key points

• The function returns a flag (1 or 0) rather than printing the verdict — the caller decides how to present it, which keeps the function reusable (e.g. to count defaulters across a class).
• daysPresent / workingDays uses true division, so the percentage is exact. …