Numbers in Python

Types of numbers in Python

Python has three built in numeric data types-

1. Integer (int)
2. Floating-point numbers (float)
3. Complex (complex)

Out of these, integers and floating-point numbers are used more commonly than complex number types.

1. Integer (int)-

An int is a whole number, positive or negative, of unlimited length without any decimals. If a floating point number is to be converted to int, the digits after the decimal point are just removed, and not rounded off.

For example -

num=245

print(type(num))

The output-

<class 'int'>

More about type() in a future post.

2. Floating-point numbers (float)-

A floating-point number is a number with a decimal point.

For example-

num=14.87

print(type(num))

The output-

<class 'float'>

3. Complex numbers (complex)-

A complex number is a number that has two components: A real element and an imaginary one.
Python is one of the few coding languages that provides built-in support for complex numbers.

For example-

num=1+2j

print(type(num))

The output-

<class 'complex'>

Python puts the complex number in brackets to eliminate any confusion of it being a arithmetic expression.
To find the real and imaginary element from a complex number, we can do the following-

num=1+2j

print(num.real)

print(num.imag)

The output-

1.0
2.0

We can also get the complex conjugate of a number in the following way-

num=1+2j

print(num.conjugate())

The output-

(1-2j)

Other Ways to Define Numbers

Numbers can also be defined in the following ways-

Exponential Notation

num=2e4

print(num)

The output

20000.0

Here, the e notation multiplies the value before it with 10^x, where x is the number after e.

Underscores

num=1_000_000

print(num)

The output-

1000000

Underscores between numbers are ignored by the Python interpreter. So, doing this helps the programmer identifying large numbers easily, in case they have to do it manually.

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That is all for today's post on Python numbers. Hope it was informative and easy to understand. Drop a comment below if you have any suggestions, improvements, questions, etc.

Regards,
Aarav Iyer