Newbie question - please don't hate me

[Cory McPhee]

In his tutorial on Python programming Richard Baldwin says "You will need to
cause the directory containing the file named python.exe to be listed in
your system environment variable named path."

I was wondering if anyone would be so kind as to tell me how I should go
about doing this in Windows XP, or even just point me to where I can find
out how to do this.

Thanks in advance for any help
Cory