As long as we pass the variable as a parameter, it will declare as

val

?

I don't know the answer to your question, but I do know the code that has worked for me is to assign n to a val within the method.

Thanks Katrina. 😄

https://kotlinlang.org/spec/declarations.html#function-declaration

parameters are final and cannot be changed inside the function

if you really have to modify the value, use

var n = n

inside the function which creates a local variable with the same name, shadowing the parameter. But generally, this is not good style because it makes it appear as if you can modify the parameter (which you can not as @ephemient explained)