making simple decisions using the if statement the if statement is the easiest method for making decision in python it simply states that if something is truepython should perform the steps that follow the following sections tell you how you can use the if statement to make decisions of various sorts in python you may be surprised at what this simple statement can do for you understanding the if statement you use if statements regularly in everyday life for exampleyou may say to yourself"if it' wednesdayi'll eat tuna salad for lunch the python if statement is little less verbosebut it follows precisely the same pattern say you create variabletestmeand place value of in itlike thistestme you can then ask the computer to check for value of in testmelike thisif testme = print("testme does equal !"every python if statement beginsoddly enoughwith the word if when python sees ifit knows that you want it to make decision after the word if comes condition condition simply states what sort of comparison you want python to make in this caseyou want python to determine whether testme contains the value notice that the condition uses the relational equality operator==and not the assignment operatora common mistake that developers make is to use the assignment operator rather than the equality operator you can see list of relational operators in the condition always ends with colon (:if you don' provide colonpython doesn' know that the condition has ended and will continue to look for additional conditions on which to base its decision after the colon come any tasks you want python to perform in this casepython prints statement saying that testme is equal to