learn-co-students / ds-skills2-variable-assignment-lab-nyc-ds-skills-011519

Introduction to Variables: Variable Assignment - Lab

Introduction

Now that we know about variables, we want to put them to use by associating them with some data. Here, we will be using variables to store information related to a vacation that we would like to go on.

Just as before, we ask you to run the code and ensure that it matches what is commented out.

Objectives

You will be able to:

• Understand, explain and use variables

Assigning variables

Assign a variable of travel_month equal to the string "January", as that is the month we would like to travel.

travel_month = None

We start by setting the variable equal to the data type None. As we know, None represents the absence of a value. Now we can take care of assigning the variable to something other than None.

travel_month # "January"

Now let's assign a variable equal to the number of weeks that we would like to travel, 3.

number_of_weeks = None

number_of_weeks # 3

UPDATE: we just learned that we can travel for a longer period of time. So, we need to reassign the number_of_weeks variable equal to 5.

number_of_weeks # 5

Now that's more like it.

Finally, let's create a string that uses both of these variables to tell us how many weeks we will be traveling in our travel month. The string should read "I will be travelling 5 weeks starting in the month of January". Interpolate the num_of_weeks and travel_month to get the correct string.

Remember: We can interpolate strings in the following ways:

• "Start of string" + variable_to_interpolate1 + "middle" + variable_to_interpolate2 + "end of string"
• "Start of string {variable1} middle {variable2} end of string".format(variable1=variable_to_interpolate, variable2=variable_to_interpolate)
• f"Start of string {variable_to_interpolate1} middle {variable_to_interpolate2} end of string"

travelling_schedule = None

Summary

Great! In this lab, we were able to get some more practice with storing information in variables through assignment and reassignment.