Python Fundamentals

Overview

Teaching: 20 min
Exercises: 10 min

Questions

• What basic data types can I work with in Python?

• How can I create a new variable in Python?

• Can I change the value associated with a variable after I create it?

Objectives

• Assign values to variables.

Variables

Any Python interpreter can be used as a calculator:

3 + 5 * 4

23

This is great but not very interesting. To do anything useful with data, we need to assign its value to a variable. In Python, we can assign a value to a variable, using the equals sign =. For example, to assign value 2 to a variable flour_c, we would execute:

flour_c = 2

From now on, whenever we use flour_c, Python will substitute the value we assigned to it. In layman’s terms, a variable is a name for a value.

In Python, variable names:

• can include letters, digits, and underscores
• cannot start with a digit
• are case sensitive.

This means that, for example:

• flour0 is a valid variable name, whereas 0flour is not
• flour and Flour are different variables

Types of data

Python knows various types of data. Three common ones are:

• integer numbers
• floating point numbers, and
• strings.

In the example above, variable flour_c has an integer value of 2. To create a variable with a floating point value, we can execute:

flour_c = 2.0

And to create a string, we add single or double quotes around some text, for example:

flour_c_text = 'flour in cups:'

Using Variables in Python

To display the value of a variable to the screen in Python, we can use the print function:

print(flour_c)

2.0

We can display multiple things at once using only one print command:

print(flour_c_text, flour_c)

flour in cups: 2.0

To change the value of the flour_c variable, we have to assign flour_c a new value using the equals = sign:

flour_c = 2.5
print('flour in cups is now:', flour_c)

flour in cups is now: 2.5

Check Your Understanding

What values do the variables mass and age have after each statement in the following program? Test your answers by executing the commands.

mass = 47.5
age = 122
mass = mass * 2.0
age = age - 20
print(mass, age)

Solution

95.0 102

Key Points

• Basic data types in Python include integers, strings, and floating-point numbers.

• Use variable = value to assign a value to a variable in order to record it in memory.

• Variables are created on demand whenever a value is assigned to them.

• Use print(something) to display the value of something.