just as the mailboxes are numbered in mail holderthe memory slots used for list are numbered the numbers begin with not with as you might expect each mailbox receives the next number in line mail holder with the months of the year would contain mailboxes the mailboxes would be numbered from to (not as you might thinkit' essential to get the numbering scheme down as quickly as possible because even experienced developers get into trouble by using and not as starting point at times depending on what sort of information you place in each mailboxthe mailboxes need not be of the same size python lets you store string in one mailboxan integer in anotherand floating-point value in another the computer doesn' know what kind of information is stored in each mailbox and it doesn' care all the computer sees is one long list of numbers that could be anything python performs all the work required to treat the data elements according to the right type and to ensure that when you request item fiveyou actually get item five in generalit' good practice to create lists of like items to make the data easier to manage when creating list of all integersfor examplerather than of mixed datayou can make assumptions about the information and don' have to spend nearly as much time checking it howeverin some situationsyou might need to mix data many other programming languages require that lists have just one type of databut python offers the flexibility of using mixed data sorts just remember that using mixed data in list means that you must determine the data type when retrieving the information in order to work with the data correctly treating string as an integer would cause problems in your application creating lists as in real lifebefore you can do anything with listyou must create it as previously statedpython lists can mix types howeverit' always best practice to restrict list to single type when you can the following steps demonstrate how to create python lists open python shell window you see the familiar python prompt type list ["one" "two"trueand press enter python creates list named list for you this list contains two string values (one and two)an integer value ( )and boolean value (trueof courseyou can' actually see anything because python processes the command without saying anything