Q:

TypeError: unsupported operand type(s) for &: 'float' and 'float'

I wrote this simple program to calculate one's BMI. But I am unable to execute it complete. Below is my program,
PROGRAM
h = input("Please Enter your height in meters:")
q = raw_input("Do you want to enter your weight in kg or lbs?")

if q=="kg":
         w1 = input("Please Enter your weight in kgs:")
         bmi1 = w1/(h*h) 
         print "Your BMI is", bmi1

         if bmi1 <= 18.5: 
                        print "Your are underweight."
         if bmi1 > 18.5 & bmi1 < 24.9: 
                                     print "Your weight is normal."
         if bmi1 > 25 & bmi1 < 29.9: 
                                   print "Your are overweight"              
         if bmi1 >= 30: 
                      print "Your are obese"                    

if q=="lbs":
          w2 = input("Please Enter your weightin lbs:")
          bmi2 = w2/((h*h)*(39.37*39.37)*703) 
          print "Your BMI is:", bmi2

          if bmi2<= 18.5: 
                        print "Your are underweight."
          if bmi2>18.5 & bmi2<24.9: 
                                  print "Your weight is normal."
          if bmi2>25 & bmi2<29.9: 
                                print "Your are overweight"         
          if bmi2>=30: 
                     print "Your are obese" 

OUTPUT
Please Enter your height in meters:1.52
Do you want to enter your weight in kg or lbs?kg
Please Enter your weight in kgs:51
Your BMI is 22.074099723
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
  File "bmi.py", line 11, in <module>
    if bmi1 > 18.5 & bmi1 < 24.9: 
TypeError: unsupported operand type(s) for &: 'float' and 'float'

Where am I going wrong? Anyone just let me know..
Thanks :).

A:

& is a bitwise operator, I think you were looking for the boolean and.
But notice that Python also supports the following syntax:
if 18.5 < bmi1 < 24.9:
    # ...

Since you seemed to have trobled with indentation this is how your script might look like:
h = raw_input("Please enter your height in meters: ")
h = float(h)
w_unit = raw_input("Do you want to enter your weight in kg or lbs? ")
w = raw_input("Please enter your weight in {}: ".format(w_unit))
w = int(w)
if w_unit == "kg":
    bmi = w / (h*h)
elif w_unit == "lbs":
    bmi = w / ((h*h) * (39.37 * 39.37) * 703)

print "Your BMI is {:.2f}".format(bmi)
if bmi <= 18.5: 
    print "Your are underweight."
elif 18.5 < bmi <= 25: 
    print "Your weight is normal."
elif 25 < bmi < 30: 
    print "Your are overweight"              
elif bmi >= 30:
    print "Your are obese"

There are a couple of slight improvements:

The explicit conversion (since in Python 3 the input function behave like raw_input and there's nothing like the Python 2 input, it might be a good habit to write your input like that)
What really changes is the bmi value, so there's no need to write two times the same thing.

Something left to do, might be wrap the whole script into functions :)

