defining the essential python data types every programming language defines variables that hold specific kinds of informationand python is no exception the specific kind of variable is called data type knowing the data type of variable is important because it tells you what kind of information you find inside in additionwhen you want to store information in variableyou need variable of the correct data type to do it python doesn' allow you to store text in variable designed to hold numeric information doing so would damage the text and cause problems with the application you can generally classify python data types as numericstringand booleanalthough there really isn' any limit on just how you can view them the following sections describe each of the standard python data types within these classifications putting information into variables to place value into any variableyou make an assignment using the assignment operator (= discusses the whole range of basic python operators in more detailbut you need to know how to use this particular operator to some extent now for exampleto place the number into variable named myvaryou type myvar and press enter at the python prompt even though python doesn' provide any additional information to youyou can always type the variable name and press enter to see the value it containsas shown in figure - figure - use the assignment operator to place infor mation into variable understanding the numeric types humans tend to think about numbers in general terms we view and as being the same number -one of them simply has decimal point howeveras far as we're concernedthe two numbers are equal and we could easily use them interchangeably python views them as being different kinds of numbers