thing + thing thing thing - thing thing thing * thing thing thing / is equivalent to thing thing thing ** thing thing * thing % thing thing the operation of modifying the value attached to name is so common that pythonand some other languageshave short-cuts in their syntax to make the operations shorter to write these operations are called "augmented assignmentsthis sort of short-cut for an operation which could already be written in the language is sometimes called "syntactic sugar