You've learned how to work with individual pieces of data using variables and fundamental types like numbers, strings, and booleans. However, most programs need to handle groups of related data. Storing each item in a separate variable quickly becomes impractical.

This chapter introduces Python's built-in collection types, which provide efficient ways to store and manage multiple data items. You will learn about:

• Lists: Ordered, mutable sequences for storing collections where items can be changed, added, or removed.
• Tuples: Ordered, immutable sequences, useful when the collection of items should not change after creation.
• Dictionaries: Unordered collections that store data as key-value pairs, allowing for fast data retrieval based on a unique key.
• Sets: Unordered collections that store only unique items, useful for membership testing and eliminating duplicates.

Understanding how to use these different structures effectively is essential for organizing data in your Python programs. We will cover how to create, access, modify (where applicable), and choose the appropriate collection type for different programming scenarios.