Python Numeric Types

Lesson Contents

Python supports multiple data types, including a variety of different numeric data types:

Integer
Float
Complex

Let’s look at some examples.

Integer

An integer is a positive or negative whole number without a decimal point. For example:

Above, we see an integer with positive value 1. You can also have negative integers:

Above, we see an integer with negative value 5. We can see that this is an integer by using the type function:

Python tells us this is an integer. We can also calculate with integers. For example:

We’ll cover more advanced calculations later in the Python Arithmetic Operators lesson.

Float

A float is used to represent real numbers, that is, numbers with a decimal point. For example:

How do we know this is a float? Let’s try the type function again:

This tells us this is a float. We can also calculate with floats:

When you calculate with integers, you might end up with a float:

Complex

A complex number is a combination of a real number and an imaginary number. Complex numbers are used in scientific, geometry, or calculus calculations. I never needed these in any of my scripts but for the sake of completeness, I’ll briefly mention them. Here’s an example in Python:

Conversion

You can also convert between the different numeric types. This can be useful when you have a float and want to get rid of everything after the decimal. Here’s an example of how we can convert a float into an integer:

As you can see above, Python gets rid of everything after the decimal point.

A little off-topic but you can also use this to convert a string into an integer (or float). For example, int("5") converts the string “5” into integer 5. Another example: float("3.2") converts string “3.2” into float 3.2.

Conclusion

You have learned about the different Python numeric data types:

There are three numeric data types:
- Integer: a positive or negative number without a decimal point.
- Float: a positive or negative number with a decimal point.
- Complex: a combination of a real and an imaginary number and used for advanced calculations.
We can convert between the three numeric data types.

Forum Replies

Hi Rene,

In given eg,
my_integer = 1.9
type(my_integer)

my_int = int(my_integer)
type(my_int)

i could not understand the output of last two commands , as per me it will be like this:

type(my_integer) =  type(1.9)
my_int = int(1.9)
type(my_int) = type (int(1.9))

so as per you it shows that class is integer(what integer) and How and how it get rid of decimal values?

Hello Pradyumna

The code in this particular example is as follows:

my_integer = 1.9

The above code creates a variable called my_integer and assigns it a value of 1.9. This will automatically make this variable a float type because it is not an integer, but a real number.

type(my_integer)

This code causes output that indicates the type of variable that my_integer is. You can see this returns the following text: <class ‘float’> so it is verified that the my_integer variable is of float type.

my_int = int(my_integer)

The above code takes the my_integer variabl

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