Basic math operations – addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division

For basic math operations in Python, we use the conventional mathematical operators +, -, *, and /. These operators represent plus, minus, multiplication, and division operations respectively. All these operators are embedded in the following line of code:

>>>3.09+2.1*5.2-3/0.56
8.652857142857144

Although we use integer division less frequently in finance, a user might type the division sign twice (//) accidentally to get a weird result. The integer division is done with double slash //, which would return an integer value that is the largest integer than the final output. The result of 7 divided by 3 is 2.33, and 2 will be the largest integer smaller than 2.33. This example is shown in the following code:

>>>7/3
2.3333333333333335

For Python 2.x versions, 7/3 could be 2 instead of 2.333. Thus, we have to be careful. In order to avoid an integer division, we could use 7/2 or 7/2., that is...