your choice of techniques for performing comparisons affects the manner in which python views the data and determines the sorts of things you can do to manage the data after the comparison is made all this functionality might seem absurdly complex at the momentbut the important point to remember is that applications require comparisons in order to interact with data correctly understanding how computers make comparisons computers don' understand packagingsuch as functionsor any of the other structures that you create with python all this packaging is for your benefitnot the computer' howevercomputers do directly support the concept of operators most python operators have direct corollary with command that the computer understands directly for examplewhen you ask whether one number is greater than another numberthe computer can actually perform this computation directlyusing an operator (the upcoming section explains operators in detail some comparisons aren' direct computers work only with numbers sowhen you ask python to compare two stringswhat python actually does is compare the numeric value of each character in the string for examplethe letter is actually the number in the computer lowercase letter has different numeric value - as resulteven though you might see abc as being equal to abcthe computer doesn' agree -it sees them as different because the numeric values of their individual letters are different working with operators operators are the basis for both control and management of data within applications you use operators to define how one piece of data is compared to another and to modify the information within single variable in factoperators are essential to performing any sort of math-related task and to assigning data to variables in the first place when using an operatoryou must supply either variable or an expression you already know that variable is kind of storage box used to hold data an expression is an equation or formula that provides description of mathematical concept in most casesthe result of evaluating an expression is boolean (true or falsevalue the following sections describe operators in detail because you use them everywhere throughout the rest of the book