An Introduction to Interactive Programming in Python - Week zero

Comments — CodeSkulptor

• Non-computational parts of the program that textually describe the behavior of the program.
• Comments begin with #, everything to right of the hash is ignored by Python.
• Comments should be frequent so you and others can understand the code.
• Lecture examples - CodeSkulptor
• More examples - Comments, Strings, and Print

Strings — CodeSkulptor

• Sequence of characters enclosed by a pair of single or double quotes
• Examples are "cats hate dogs" and 'Strings are fun!'.
• Strings are one kind of data in Python. Their data type is denoted str.
• Lecture examples - Hello World
• More examples - Comments, Strings, and Print

Numbers — Arithmetic Expressions

• There are two kinds of numerical data in Python: integers and decimal numbers.
• Integers correspond to the data type int. Decimal numbers are represented by floating-point numbers corresponding to the data type float.
• Floating-point numbers have around 15 decimal digits of accuracy.
• In CodeSkulptor, all numbers (even integers) are represented internally as floating-point numbers.
• Lecture examples - Arithmetic Expressions
• More examples - Floats and Ints

Arithmetic Operators — Arithmetic Expressions

• Five basic arithmetic operators; addition (+), subtraction (-), multiplication (*), division (/) and exponentiation (**)
• CodeSkulptor implements a subset of Python 2. In Python 2, the division operator (/) returns a float approximation to the exact answer if either of the operands is a  float.  If both operands are integers, division returns the exact answer round down to the nearest integer.
• The integer division operator // returns the quotient of two numbers..
• Lecture examples - Arithmetic Expressions
• More examples - Arithmetic Operations, Division

Arithmetic Expressions — Arithmetic Expressions

• An arithmetic expression is either a number or an operator applied to two arithmetic expressions.
• Arithmetic expressions are entered as a sequence of numbers and arithmetic operators.
• Expressions are formed by grouping operators and operands via precedence: "Please excuse my dear Aunt Sallie"; parentheses, exponentiation, multiplication, division, addition, subtraction.
• Lecture examples - Arithmetic Expressions
• More examples - Order of Operations for Arithmetic Expressions, Possible Errors for Arithmetic Expressions

Variables — Variables

• Variable names consist of a sequence of letters, number and underscores (_).
• Variable names start with a letter or underscore and are case sensitive.
• Single equals (=) is used for assignment to variables. Double equals (==) is used for testing equality.
• Lecture examples - Variables
• More examples - Variable Naming, Vabiable Assignment, Variable Operations, Formulas

From:  https://class.coursera.org/interactivepython-005/wiki/view?page=week0