Algorithm maths quiz + write to a text file

A few advices :

• Python has a code style called PEP8. It is a worth reading. Also, you'll find various tools to check that your code is PEP8-compliant like pep8. You'll also find various other tools to check the quality of your code : pyflakes, pychecker, pylint, etc.

• avoid useless comments. It can be tempting to comment every line you write as you start programming. However, what you are doing adds more noise that it actually helps. As a rule of thumb, "Code Tells You How, Comments Tell You Why". Also, comments are easy to get out of sync with the code (you have places where your code says "25" and the comment says "10", how confusing).

• you can add an argument to input so that you don't have to call print before.

• your while question < 10 loop looks like it could/should be a for loop : for question in range(10): (and no need for an initialisation nor for a incrementation in the loop). Also, as a side-note, the convention in Python is to use _ for throw-away values, thus, the loop could be written : for _ in range(10):.

• you should try to use the with keyword whenever you handle files. If you do so, you don't have to call close explicitly.

• you should try to ask yourself if your variable describe how you use it. For instance, class_name is a proper name for what you do at the beginning. However, it doesn't sound like a proper filename. You could simple create a new variable : filename = class_name + ".txt"

• avoid useless tests : in elif viewscore != "yes".lower(), the condition will always be true. You could simply write else.

• calling lower() on "yes" doesn't seem really interesting does it ?

Now, for more "complicated" advices.

You can try to split the logic in small reusable units like functions (or classes). For instance, you could write :

def get_int_input():
    while True:
      try:
        return int(input())
      except ValueError:
        print ("That is not a valid answer")

Instead of having some code to handle the different possible operations, you could have a structure containing the relevant information : the symbol to be printed and the corresponding operation. You could use a list of tuple to store everything and then, it's easy to pick one at random and use it :

import operator

OPERATIONS = [
    (operator.add, "+"),
    (operator.mul, "*"),
    (operator.sub, "-")
    ]

for _ in range(10):
    num1 = random.randint(1,25)
    num2 = random.randint(1,25)
    op, symbol = random.choice(OPERATIONS)
    print("What is", num1, symbol, num2)
    if get_int_input() == op(num1, num2):
        print("Correct")
        score += 1
    else:
        print("Incorrect")

If you ever need to add one, it's quite easy.

It is also a good habit to use a if __name__ == '__main__': guard.

Similarly to what we've done to get an integer input, we can define a function to get a boolean input.

The final code looks like :

import random
import operator

OPERATIONS = [
    (operator.add, "+"),
    (operator.mul, "*"),
    (operator.sub, "-")
    ]

NB_QUESTIONS = 10

def get_int_input(prompt=''):
    while True:
      try:
        return int(input(prompt))
      except ValueError:
        print("Not a valid input (integer is expected)")

def get_bool_input(prompt=''):
    while True:
        val = input(prompt).lower()
        if val == 'yes':
            return True
        elif val == 'no':
            return False
        else:
            print("Not a valid input (yes/no is expected)")

if __name__ == '__main__':
    name = input("What is your name?").title()
    class_name = input("Which class do you wish to input results for? ")
    print(name, ", Welcome to the OCR Controlled Assessment Maths Test")

    score = 0
    for _ in range(NB_QUESTIONS):
        num1 = random.randint(1,25)
        num2 = random.randint(1,25)
        op, symbol = random.choice(OPERATIONS)
        print("What is", num1, symbol, num2)
        if get_int_input() == op(num1, num2):
            print("Correct")
            score += 1
        else:
            print("Incorrect")

    print("Well done", name, "you scored", score, "/", NB_QUESTIONS)

    filename = class_name + ".txt"

    with open(filename, 'a') as f:
        f.write(str(name) + " : " + str(score) + '\n')

    if get_bool_input("Do you wish to view previous results for your class"):
        with open(filename, 'r') as f:
            print(f.read())
    else:
        input ("Press any key to exit")