What Is Variable (Mathematics)?

You know those times when you're just sitting in your very own room, minding your own business and doing the stuff you usually do, and then suddenly you hear someone at the door outside… BAM! Your mom just walks into the room and asks you to do something. Your life is changed forever. That's what variables are like. They're the things that change your life. They can be anything: a number, a letter, an animal (like a cat or dog), or even another person (if you're into that kind of thing). In statistics, variables are divided into two categories: independent and dependent. The independent variable is the one that affects the outcome of an experiment—it's the thing you change to observe how it affects everything else in the equation. The dependent variable changes when you change an independent variable. It's affected by whatever value you give to your independent variable (for example, if you want something extraordinary for dinner tonight and decide to use beef as your dependent variable). Variables are a huge part of computer programming. They're pretty much like regular variables, except they're on the computer and don't have any arms, legs, or anything like that. They can be assigned a data type, like numerical, alphabetical, image, array or video clips. A variable's data type tells the computer what information is stored. If you want to keep a picture in one variable and a number in another variable, you need to tell the computer what information each one holds. You can also assign memory locations to variables. The data on the site can change during the program's execution. Still, when the variable is encountered in the program, the computer substitutes that information for whatever was stored there before!