Lecture 2

Variables and numeric data types

 Objectives of this Lecture

• Getting started with Python/Thonny

• To understand the process of assigning values to

variables

• To understand simultaneous or unary operator

assignment

• To look into limitations of numeric data types

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 Getting stated with Thonny
Thonny is an IDE (Integrated Development Environment)
Simple IDE for
beginners to
manage, execute and
debug Python codes

The >>> that you see

is a prompt that
indicates the
interpreter is waiting
for you to type a
Python statement.

L4 Variables and numeric data types - 3 https://thonny.org/

 Getting Started with Python

Start with single statements

>>> 2+3
5
>>> 22/7
3.142857142857143
>>> 3**2
9
>>> print(“Hello world”)
Hello world
>>> print(“2+3=“, 2+3)
2+3=5

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 Please download and
install the Slido app on
all computers you use

What is a variable in
Python?

ⓘ Start presenting to display the poll results on this slide.

 Variable

• What is a variable?
A variable is a name/identifier that represents a value
in the computer’s memory.

• Every variable is connected to a value

• When a variable represents a value in the
computer’s memory, we say that the variable
references the value.

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 Creating Variables with Assignment
Statements
• You use an assignment statement to create a variable
and make it reference a piece of data.

age = 25

After this statement executes, a variable named

age will be created, and it will reference the value
25.

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 Assignment Statements
• Simple Assignment statement
The equal sign
variable = expression (=) is known as
the assignment
operator.

• expression is a value, or any piece of code that

results in a value. After an assignment statement
executes, the variable listed on the left side of the =
operator will reference the value given on the right
side of the = operator.
Programs are composed
of statements that are
built from identifiers
and expressions

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 Assignment Statements – the Simple View

An expression can be composed of:

• Variable: an identifier that references a value.
• Literal: is a representation of a specific value. For
example, 1 is a literal.
• Operator(s): enable operations to be performed on
literals and variables

x = x+1

Examples of python operators for numbers include:

+ (addition), - (subtraction), * (multiplication),
/ (division), % (modulo), ** (exponentiation)

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 Assignment Statements

• x = 3.9 * x * (1-x)

• fahrenheit = 9/5 * celsius + 32

• x = 5

The spacing around parts of assignments is optional

but makes the resulting program much more readable
– and hence maintainable.

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 Assignment Statements
Variables can be reassigned as many times as you
want!

>>> dollars = 2.75

>>> dollars
2.75

>>> dollars = 99.95

>>> dollars
99.95

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 Simultaneous Assignment

• Several values can be calculated at the same time

• <var>, <var>, … = <expr>, <expr>, …

• Evaluate the expressions on the right and assign

them to the variables on the left
– Must have same number of expressions as
variables!
>>>sum, diff = x+y, x-y

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 Simultaneous Assignment
• How could you swap the values for x and y?
• Let x= 10 and y =15
– Does this work?
x = y
y = x

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 Please download and
install the Slido app on
all computers you use

What is the new value

of y?

ⓘ Start presenting to display the poll results on this slide.

 Simultaneous Assignment
• How could you swap the values for x and y?
– Why doesn’t this work?
x = y
y = x
– #assume x= 10, y= 15 initially….. x= y will make x= 15, and
then y=x, will assign y the value of x

• We could use a temporary variable…

temp = x
x = y
y = temp

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 Simultaneous Assignment

We can swap the values of two variables easily in Python!

>>> x = 3
>>> y = 4
>>> print(x, y)
3 4
>>> x, y = y, x
>>> print(x, y)
4 3

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 Unary operator Assignment

• Certain types of assignment statement are so

common that a short-cut exists
x = x + n, (especially x = x +1)
x = x – n (n can be any expression)
• These become
x += n
x -= n
• Also
x *= n
x /= n, etc.

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 Numeric Data Types

• There are two different kinds of numbers!

– 5, 4, 3, 6 are whole numbers – they don’t have a
fractional part
– 0.25, 1.10, 3.142 are decimal fractions

• Inside the computer, whole numbers and decimal

fractions are represented quite differently!
– We say that decimal fractions and whole numbers
are two different data types.

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 Numeric Data Types
Integers
• Whole numbers are represented using the integer
(int) data type.
– Size depends on machine using it

• These values can be positive or negative whole

numbers.

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 Numeric Data Types

Floats:
Numbers with a decimal point are called floats or
floating-point values.

• How can we tell which is which?

– A numeric literal without a decimal point produces

an int value

– A literal that has a decimal point is represented by

a float (even if the fractional part is 0)
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 Numeric Data Types
• Why do we need two number types?

– Values that represent counts can’t be fractional

– Most mathematical algorithms are very efficient

with integers

– The float type stores only an approximation to the

real number being represented!

– Since floats aren’t exact, use an int whenever

possible!

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 Numeric Data Types
• Operations on ints produce ints (excluding /)
• Operations on floats produce floats.
>>> 3.0+4.0
7.0
>>> 3+4
7
>>> 10.0/3.0
3.3333333333333335
/ does floating point division
>>> 10/3
3.3333333333333335
>>> 10 // 3
// does integer division
3

If you mix an integer and a

float in any other operation,
you’ll get a float

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 Numeric Data Types

• Integer division produces a whole number.

– That’s why 10//3 gives 3

• Think of it as ‘goes into’, where 10//3 gives 3 since 3

(goes into) 10, three times (with a remainder of 1)

• 10 % 3 = 1 is the remainder of the integer division of 10

by 3.

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 Limits of Int

• What’s going on?

– While there are an infinite number of integers,

there is a finite range of integers that can be
represented by int.

– This range depends on the number of bits a

particular CPU uses to represent an integer value.

• Does switching to float data types get us around the

limitations of int?

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 Approximation of float
>>> x1 = 10**121
10000…
>>> y1 = x1 + 1
10000… … … 1
>>> z1 = x1 – y1
-1
>>> x2 = 10.0**121 # can also be x2 = 10e+121
1e+122
>>> y2 = x2 + 1
1e+122
>>> z2 = x2 – y2
0.0

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 Handling Large Integers
• Floats are approximations

• Floats allow us to represent a larger range of values,

but with fixed precision.

• Python int is not a fixed size but expands to handle

whatever value it holds.
• Newer versions of Python automatically convert int
to an expanded form when it grows so large as to
overflow.
• Can store and work with indefinitely large values
(e.g., 100!) at the cost of speed and memory

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 Type Conversion

• Combining an int with a float in an expression will return a

float

• We can explicitly convert between different data types

• For example, the int and round functions convert a
float to integer
>>> int(6.8) # Truncate
6
>>> round(6.8)
7
>>> float(6)
6.0
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 Type Conversion : More examples

str: string/text

The int() and float() functions work only if the item that is being converted
contains a valid numeric value. If the argument cannot be converted to the
specified data type, an error occurs.
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 Find Data Type
• We can use the type function to find the data type
>>> type(4)
<class ‘int’>

>>> type(4.3) If a variable exists, the type of

<class ‘float’>
the variable is the type of the
>>> x = 5.76 value assigned to it
>>> type(x)
<class ‘float’>

>>> type(hello) # Without quotes, assumes ‘hello’ is a

# variable. Not defined, so will generate
# an error
>>> type(‘hello’)
<class ‘str’>

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 Scientific Notation

• Typical precision is 16 digits (decimal places)

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 Float Problems
• Very large and very small floating-point values can also
cause problems (current Python)

>>> x = 1.0e308 >>> x = 1.0e-323

>>> x >>> x
1e+308 1e-323
>>> x = 100* x >>> x = x / 100.0
>>> x >>> x
inf 0.0

This is called This is called

over-flow under-flow

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 Lecture Summary

• Understanding the concept of assignment in Python

• We learned how to
– assign values to variables
– do multiple assignments in one statement
– Limitations of data types

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 Please download and
install the Slido app on
all computers you use

You cannot use a variable until you have

assigned a value to it. An error will
occur if you try to perform an operation
on a variable, such as printing it, before
it has been assigned a value.

ⓘ Start presenting to display the poll results on this slide.