title: Codecademy Hurricane
body: <p>I'm a newbie at Codecademy and I'm currently doing this Hurricane Analysis project. The question I'm stuck on requires me to convert a string (such as "1.76B") and convert it to a real number.</p>
  
  <p>I've tried parsing the string, but can't figure out how to add and convert the B part and add it to the float.</p>
  
  <pre class="lang-py prettyprint-override"><code>def convert_damages(damages):
    for damage in damages:
      if damage[-1] == 'B':
        split_damages = damage.split('B')
  
      elif damage[-1] == 'M':
        split_damages = damage.split('M')
  
      else:
        return
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>So if I have a list containing something like 1.76M, 2.35B and 3.11M it should return something like 1760000, 2350000000, 3110000 </p>