Python Tutorial: Creating variables

Want to learn more? Take the full course at https://learn.datacamp.com/courses/introduction-to-data-science-in-python at your own pace. More than a video, you'll learn hands-on coding & quickly apply skills to your daily work. --- Previously, you started writing Python code in the script editor and the console. You learned what a module is, and how to import all or part of it. You learned to simplify module names using an alias. In this lesson, you'll learn about variables, which help us reference a piece of data for later use. In the previous lesson, we told you about our kidnapped Golden Retriever, Bayes. To solve the mystery, let's start by filling out a Missing Puppy Report. In order to file the report, we'll need to record some information about Bayes, such as his height and weight. In Python, we will represent each line from the missing puppy report with a variable. A variable gives us an easy-to-use shortcut to a piece of data. Whenever we use the variable name in our code, it will be replaced with the original piece of data. In this case, one of our variables is "name" and its value is "Bayes". Another variable is "height" and its value is "24". We define variables using an equals sign. When defining variables, we need to follow a few rules. Variables must start with a letter. You can use a capital letter, but we usually use lowercase. After the first letter, we can use letters, numbers, and underscores in our variable name. We can't use special characters like exclamation points or dashes. Variable names are case sensitive, so these two different ways of typing "my_var" would be different variables. On the left are some examples of valid variable names, and on the right are some examples of invalid variable names. Let's see what happens when we try to use an invalid variable name. The variable bayes-height is invalid because of the hyphen. When we try to enter it, we will receive a SyntaxError. Above the Syntax Error, we see the line of code t