Variables can hold numbers that you can use one or more times.

Numbers can be of one of these datatypes:

• integer (1,2,3,4)
• float (numbers behind the dot)
• boolean (True or False)

Related Course:
Practice Python with interactive exercises

Numeric variables example

Example of numeric variables:

x = 1
y = 1.234
z = True

You can output them to the screen using the print() function.

x = 1
y = 1.234
z = True
print(x)
print(y)
print(z)

Python supports arithmetic operations like addition (+), multiplication (*), division (/) and subtractions (-).

#!/usr/bin/env python
x = 3
y = 8
sum = x + y
print(sum)

More mathematical operations

User input

Python 3 Use the input() function to get text input, convert to a number using int() or float().

#!/usr/bin/env python
x = int(input("Enter x:"))
y = int(input("Enter y:"))
sum = x + y
print(sum)

Python 2 (old version) You can also ask the user for input using the raw_input function:

#!/usr/bin/env python
x = int(raw_input("Enter x:"))
y = int(raw_input("Enter y:"))
sum = x + y
print(sum)