The following table shows the symbols used to represent the basic arithmetic operations:

	Note that an asterisk (*) is used to represent multiplication, not x.

Here is a simple example of Python code that contains arithmetic:

x = 3
y = 13
z = 7
result = x * y - z
print result   # the result displayed is 32

A collection of arithmetic operations and their values, such as x * y - z, is sometimes called an arithmetic expression, or expression for short.

You can use an arithmetic expression to update the value of a variable. For example:

x = 10
x = x + 1

In the second statement of the example, Python takes the existing value of x, which is 10, and adds 1 to it. The result, 11, is then assigned back to x, overwriting its previous value. The effect is to add 1 to the value of x.