Need help with an assignment from the MIT opencourse. Calculating prime numbers.

Programmer Question

So, I have a very shotty background in programing and I have, for a very long time, attempted to learn through various lessons, though, no matter how good the lesson or tutorial is said to be, it always loses me at some point. For example the CarlH lectures lost me at around unit 5 part 1 and 2 where it jumped the shark and neglected to say how to run, compile, execute code. I got confused and decided to try something else. I tried Invent your own computer games with python though it lost me at around the hangman chapter. I have also tried other things, though there is always that point where it goes "Here, it is easy! Try this...!" and of course it is something that in no way I understand. I am now doing the MIT opencourse thing, and already the second assignment, I feel it has left me out in the cold. http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-computer-science/6-00-introduction-to-computer-science-and-programming-fall-2008/assignments/pset1a.pdf If anybody could help me. I don't even know where to begin. Thanks. Hopefully this won't be another ones where it jumps the shark.

The specifics of it, are to write something that can calculate the 1000th prime number. We only know about the print, ==, =, 1=,if, else, elif, while, %, -,+,*,/, commands I think. We also don't yet know about importing libraries.

My Idea of how it would work is to take an odd number and try to divide it by, 3,4,5,6,7,8,9 and if %n !=0, then add a number to NumberofPrimes variable starting with 11 as the base of the tests, and assigning it a base value of 4 at the base of NumberofPrimes, though I don't know if that is even right, because I wouldn't know how to display the 1000th prime number.

Am I close?

The latest incarnation of it is as follows:

##calculate the 1000th prime number
potprime = 3
numberofprime = 1
cycle = if potprime%3 = 0:
            break
        if potpimre%4 = 0:
            break
        if potprime%5 = 0:
            break
        if potprime%6 = 0:
            break
        if potprime%7 = 0:
            break
        if potprime%8 = 0:
            break
        if potprime%9 = 0:
            break
        numberofprime + 1
        potprime + 1

if potprime%2 == 0:
    potprime = potprime + 1
if potprime != 0:
    cycle

Where exactly am I going wrong? Walk me through it step by step. I really want to learn it, though I feel like I am just being left out in the cold here.

At this point, it would be more beneficial for me to see how a proper one could be done rather than doing this. I have been working for 3 hours and have gotten nowhere with it. If anybody has a solution, I would be more than happy to look at it and try to learn from that.

Find the answer here