Function arguments (in Python for example)

Question

What are [function] arguments? What are they used for?
I started learning Python very recently; I\'m new to programming and I apologize for this basic

Answer 1

In a few words, they're data that gets "passed into" the function to tell it what to do. Wikipedia has details.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Function_argument

For instance, your hi() function might need to know who to say hello to:

def hi(person):
    print "Hi there " + person + ", how are you?"

Or a mathematical function might need a value to operate on:

def square(x):
     return x * x