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2.4. Mathematical Operations

In programming, we do a lot of computation. This computation more often than not involves mathematical calculations. In this section, we'll see some mathematical operations we can perform in Python.

Basic Arithmetic

Following are the operators for basic arithmetic operations:

  • + (Addition)
  • - (Subtraction)
  • * (Multiplication)
  • / (Division)

For example:

n1 = 8
n2 = 4

# 8 + 4
print('Sum:', n1 + n2)

# 8 - 2
print('Difference:', n1 - n2)

# 8 × 2
print('Product:', n1 * n2)

# 8 ÷ 2
print('Division:', n1 / n2)

Sum: 12
Difference: 4
Product: 32
Division: 2.0

Other Operations

Other operations that are also used often are:

  • ** (Power)
  • // (Integer division)
  • % (Modulus i.e remainder of division)
n1 = 5
n2 = 2

# 5 raised to power 2
print('Power:', n1 ** n2)

# Integer division (//) returns the integer part of
# division result. For example, 5 / 2 results in 2.5
# but 5 // 2 returns 2.
print('Division:', n1 // n2)

# Modulus (%) returns remainder of division 
print('Remainder:', n1 % n2)

Power: 25
Division: 2
Remainder: 1

Pitfall Alert

Mathematical operations can only be performed between two values of int or float types. If you have a numeric string, you must convert it to proper data type first otherwise an error will occur.

n1 = '20'
n2 = '30'
print(n1 * n2)  # Error!