Why do I get TypeError: can't multiply sequence by non-int of type 'float'?

raw_input returns a string (a sequence of characters). In Python, multiplying a string and a float makes no defined meaning (while multiplying a string and an integer has a meaning: "AB" * 3 is "ABABAB"; how much is "L" * 3.14 ? Please do not reply "LLL|"). You need to parse the string to a numerical value.

You might want to try:

salesAmount = float(raw_input("Insert sale amount here\n"))

Maybe this will help others in the future - I had the same error while trying to multiple a float and a list of floats. The thing is that everyone here talked about multiplying a float with a string (but here all my element were floats all along) so the problem was actually using the * operator on a list.

For example:

import math
import numpy as np
alpha = 0.2 
beta=1-alpha
C = (-math.log(1-beta))/alpha

coff = [0.0,0.01,0.0,0.35,0.98,0.001,0.0]
coff *= C

The error:

    coff *= C 
TypeError: can't multiply sequence by non-int of type 'float'

The solution - convert the list to numpy array:

coff = np.asarray(coff) * C

The problem is that salesAmount is being set to a string. If you enter the variable in the python interpreter and hit enter, you'll see the value entered surrounded by quotes. For example, if you entered 56.95 you'd see:

>>> sales_amount = raw_input("[Insert sale amount]: ")
[Insert sale amount]: 56.95
>>> sales_amount
'56.95'

You'll want to convert the string into a float before multiplying it by sales tax. I'll leave that for you to figure out. Good luck!