What exactly are data structures?

(upbeat music) So, we've been learning about Data Structures. But what exactly is it? Where did this idea come from? And what does Python see it as? Data Structures are essentially disjoint unique sets that have different properties based on their set membership, as math would define it. For example, Ints, have the property that they are rounded down or flawed if divided into non-integer valued numbers, but Floats are not held by these same restrictions. This is similar to how the Natural number sets and the Real number sets work in mathematical analysis. Python has this information encoded into something we will learn soon called objects.

Essentially, some objects or sets have certain properties that allow a very specific set of operations on them. Set Theory is a very interesting field of mathematics. And if you have further interest in understanding how Python works, learning some basic Set Theory could really help. In fact, code, is just an abstract representation of how formal Advanced Mathematics is written that allows us to perform computations that would normally be unwieldy to perform by hand.