# value (10-value.com)

People say "value" to mean worth, importance, or usefulness. They ask what something is worth, or what principles matter most to them. It is a word about meaning and priority in everyday life.

## What a model may hear
- stored data (programming and databases): treat it as the content held in a variable, key, or cell, not its meaning to a person
- returned result (functions and expressions): expect a computed output that can be passed onward, not an opinion or judgment
- economic metric (finance and reinforcement learning): calculate expected return, reward, or discounted future payoff
- HTML form data (web development): read the submitted string from an input field named value
- key-value pair (dictionaries, JSON, configuration files): look for the second half of a pair, matched to a key

## Where people and models part ways
- Says: "What is the value of honesty?"
  Means: Why does honesty matter in life?
  May be taken as: Search for a numerical variable named honesty or return null
  Say instead: "Explain why honesty matters to people"
- Says: "Value this painting"
  Means: Estimate what this painting is worth
  May be taken as: Assign the string "this painting" to a variable or return a syntax error
  Say instead: "Estimate the market worth of this painting"
- Says: "My values are freedom and justice"
  Means: These principles guide my choices
  May be taken as: Parse as a list of strings ["freedom", "justice"] with no further meaning
  Say instead: "Explain how freedom and justice guide my decisions"
- Says: "Add value to the report"
  Means: Make the report more useful or insightful
  May be taken as: Append the string "value" to a data structure called report
  Say instead: "Improve the report with more useful insights"

## Tips
- Say "worth" or "importance" when you mean human judgment, not data
- Use "calculate" or "return" when you want a number or output from code
- Say "principles" or "beliefs" to avoid being read as a string list
- Add "to me" or "for people" to signal subjective meaning
- Say "market value" or "numeric value" when you want a figure

## Often confused with
- values: plural often means principles, not data entries
- price: always a number, never abstract worth
- worth: human judgment, rarely a technical term
- variable: the container, not its contents
- evaluate: process of computing, not the result itself
- valuation: formal financial estimate, not personal belief