Imagine we have a very simple function that adds three numebrs together:

def add_three_numbers (a, b, c):
    return a + b + c

We would normally pass separate numebrs to the function, e.g.

add_three_numbers (10, 20, 35)

65

But what if our numbers are in a list or a tuple. If we pass that as a list then we are passing only a single argument, and the function declares an error:

my_list = [10, 20, 35]

add_three_numbers (my_list)

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
TypeError                                 Traceback (most recent call last)
<ipython-input-3-900947bff326> in <module>()
      1 my_list = [10, 20, 35]
      2 
----> 3 add_three_numbers (my_list)

TypeError: add_three_numbers() missing 2 required positional arguments: 'b' and 'c'

Python allows us to pass the list or tuple with the instruction to unpack it for input into the function. We instruct Python to unpack the list/tuple with an asterix before the list/tuple:

add_three_numbers (*my_list)

65