What is the function of methods in a class?

Methods in a class serve the critical role of providing procedures—essentially functions that are associated with the data contained within the class. They allow for the manipulation and interaction with the class's attributes, enabling you to perform actions such as calculations, updates, or any specific operation that is logically related to the data encapsulated within the class.

By defining methods, you encapsulate functionality that can operate on the instance data, facilitating better organization, modularity, and reusability of code. This design aligns with object-oriented programming principles, where behavior (methods) is closely linked to the data (attributes) they operate on.

The other options do not accurately reflect the primary purpose of methods. Storing static data is typically about class attributes rather than methods. Accessing the class from other programs involves external interfacing, which is not a direct function of methods but rather relates to visibility and access modifiers. Finally, defining data types associated with class attributes pertains to how data is structured rather than how it is manipulated through methods.