You have decided to investigate whether the principle of mirror statistics can in fact be applied in international trade between countries. For that, you decided to choose 5 countries to start your investigation. However, you will need two tools:

1. A database with import and export data for each country. WITS will be used. A detailed description of WITS is given on the following site: 

World Integrated Trade Solution (WITS) | Data on Export, Import, Tariff, NTM (worldbank.org) 

2. A software that allows you to read and process the data. The Python programming language integrated with Google Colab is a free and easy-to-use alternative that will be employed.  The following site shows how to start using it:

2.1. Follow the first three steps given:

https://amitness.com/2020/06/google-colaboratory-tips/

2.2. Try to add comments as described in:

https://miteshparmar1.medium.com/structure-your-code-better-in-google-colab-with-text-and-code-cells-b6fa73feec20

     2.3. For more details about the Google Colab environment:

https://heartbeat.comet.ml/getting-started-with-google-colab-notebooks-117e2bb0c220

3. Just to test the knowledge acquired in item 2 try to:

3.1. Create a new notebook in Google Colab as described in item 2.

3.2. Insert a new code in the notebook and insert the following command that will create and show a list of five countries' names:

list_names = ['Afghanistan', 'Albania', 'Algeria', 'American Samoa', 'Andorra']

list_names

Click on the play button on the left side of the code  and the expected output will be:

['Afghanistan', 'Albania', 'Algeria', 'American Samoa', 'Andorra'] 

3.3.  Access the first element of the list using the indexation operator [0]:

list_names[0]

'Afghanistan'

3.4. Access the third element of the list using the indexation operator [2]:

list_names[2]

'Algeria'

3.5. Access the first and second elements of the list using the indexation operator [0:2]. Observe that the third element is not included although the final index is [2]:

list_names[0:2]

['Afghanistan', 'Albania'] 

3.6.  Access the first element of the list using the indexation operator [0] and modify its value to 'Yugoslavia':

list_names[0] = 'Yugoslavia'

3.7.  Print the final list just writing the list name:

list_names

The output will be:

['Yugoslavia', 'Albania', 'Algeria', 'American Samoa', 'Andorra'] 

4. The Python code with all the steps is summarized in this Google Colab (click on the link):

https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1jS-qqZtw-TIRM6gkPsJ-8lVpgl2ClrMr?usp=sharing