New and Improved

Here’s a drastically modified version of the program that I wrote yesterday, using dictionaries instead of arrays.

# Alistair Bhatti
# 31/01/2017

data = {"Christ's College":"1505",
        "Churchill College":"1960",
        "Clare College":"1326",
        "Clare Hall":"1965",
        "Corpus Christi College":"1352",
        "Darwin College":"1964",
        "Downing College":"1800",
        "Emmanuel College":"1584",
        "Fitzwilliam College":"1869",
        "Girton College":"1869",
        "Gonville & Caius College":"1348",
        "Homerton College":"1768",
        "Hugh's Hall":"1885",
        "Jesus College":"1496",
        "King's College":"1441",
        "Lucy Cavendish College":"1965",
        "Magdalene College":"1428",
        "Murray Edwards College":"1954",
        "Newnham College":"1871",
        "Pembroke College":"1347",
        "Peterhouse":"1284",
        "Queen's College":"1448",
        "Robinson College":"1979",
        "Selwyn College":"1882",
        "Sidney Sussex College":"1596",
        "St Catharine's College":"1473",
        "St Edmunds's College":"1896",
        "St John's College":"1511",
        "Trinity College":"1546",
        "Trinity Hall":"1350",
        "Wolfson College":"1965"}

def get_info():
    while True:
        text_input = input("Please enter the name of a college, or the year it was founded.\n")
        text_input = text_input.lower()
        found = False
        # Input data compared both the keys and values, and prints every set in which input string appears
        for i in data.keys():
            if text_input in data[i].lower() or text_input in i.lower():
                print(i,"was founded in the year", data[i],"\n")
                found = True
        if found == False:
            print("That's not a real college or relevant year\n")

# Main Program
get_info()

This code is clearly much easier to understand and nicer to look out – I suspect it is subsequently more efficient, as it has fewer functions and no parameter passing.