part iitalking the talk controlling how python views data as discussed in all data on your computer is stored as and the computer doesn' understand the concept of lettersboolean valuesdatestimesor any other kind of information except numbers in additiona computer' capability to work with numbers is both inflexible and relatively simplistic when you work with string in pythonyou're depending on python to translate the concept of string into form the computer can understand the storage containers that your application creates and uses in the form of variables tell python how to treat the and that the computer has stored soit' important to understand that the python view of data isn' the same as your view of data or the computer' view of data -python acts as an intermediary to make your applications functional to manage data within an applicationthe application must control the way in which python views the data the use of operatorspackaging methods such as functionsand the introduction of user input all help applications control data all these techniques relyin parton making comparisons determining what to do next means understanding what state the data is in now as compared to some other state if the variable contains the name john nowbut you really want it to contain mary insteadthen you first need to know that it does in fact contain john only then can you make the decision to change the content of the variable to mary making comparisons python' main method for making comparisons is through the use of operators in factoperators play major role in manipulating data as well the upcoming "working with operatorssection discusses how operators work and how you can use them in applications to control data in various ways later use operators extensively as you discover techniques for creating applications that can make decisionsperform tasks repetitivelyand interact with the user in interesting ways howeverthe basic idea behind operators is that they help applications perform various types of comparisons in some casesyou use some fancy methods for performing comparisons in an application for exampleyou can compare the output of two functions (as described in the "comparing function outputsectionlater in this with pythonyou can perform comparisons at number of levels so that you can manage data without problem in your application using these techniques hides detail so that you can focus on the point of the comparison and define how to react to that comparison rather than become mired in detail