looking at a number in a tuple
<p>Right now my function is not recoginizing my numbers in the list coeff as numbers. I am trying to pair up items from the two list and then sort them into a different list based on the value of mul. But everything is going into the negative list. How to i make sure it is considering mul as a number going into each if statement. </p>

<pre><code>def balance_equation(species,coeff):
  data=zip(coeff,species)
  positive=[]
  negative=[]
  for (mul,el) in data:
    if mul&lt;0:
        negative.append((el,mul))
    if mul&gt;0:
        positive.append((el,mul))
</code></pre>

<p>Edit;
I ment to originally include this
balance_equation(['H2O','A2'],['6','-4'])</p>
