A value can be most anything, like a name ("Jeremy"), a whole number (5000), or a decimal number (3.14). We use values in conjunction with commands to give Ruby instructions on what to do. We'll talk more about commands in a bit.
Every value can be described by a type. There are lots of types in Ruby, and we are going to talk about three of them today: String, Fixnum, and Float.
A String is any sequence of letters and/or numbers enclosed in either single (') or double (") quotes. "Elephant Hotdog" is a String, and so is '42'. Most of the time, you can use either single or double quotes to create a string value.
A Fixnum is a whole number expressed without a decimal. There's a couple ways to create fixnum values, but the most common is to type out the number. 1 is a Fixnum, and so is 23 and -4500.
A Float is a number expressed with a decimal value. For example, float values can be expressed by typing a number with a decimal like 3.14, 0.05, and 1000.2387.
There are important distinctions between doing math in Ruby with fixnum and float values, but we will talk about those differences later.