computing with formulas for instancea is different from the following program is identical to the one abovebut with different variable namesinitial_amount interest_rate number_of_years final_amount initial_amount*( interest_rate/ )**number_of_years print(final_amountthese variable names are arguably more descriptivebut they also make the formula very long and cumbersome to read choosing good variable names is often balance between being descriptive and concisenessand the choice can be quite important for making program easy to read and understand writing readable and understandable code is obviously important if you collaborate with others who have to understand your codebut it also makes it easier for you to find errors in the code or develop it further at later stage choosing good variable names is therefore worthwhileeven if you are the only person who will ever read your code the program above contains two different types of statementsfirst there are four assignment statementswhich assign values to variablesand then single print statement at the end how these statements work might be quite intuitivebut the assignment statements are worth looking into in more detail in these statementsthe expression on the right-hand side of the equality sign is evaluated firstand then the result is assigned to the variable on the left an effect of this execution order is that statements such as the following work just fineand are common in programst print( the line would not make sense as mathematical equationbut it is perfectly valid assignment in computer program the right-hand side is evaluated firstusing the value of already definedand then the variable is updated to hold the result of the calculation the equality sign in python is called the assignment operatorandalthough it works similarly to an equality sign in mathematicsit is not quite the same if we want the more usual meaning of the equality signfor instanceto determine if two numbers are equalthe operator to use in python is = trivial comparison could look like print( = true we will see many more such examples later