Number
&
Signs

You know, once people started to count in big numbers they had to find ways of writing them down,

and because they counted in tens, because of their fingers, bunches of ten soon became ten tens, a hundred,

and then ten hundreds, a thousand.

So they found a way to write bigger numbers

by putting the tens, the hundreds and thousands in different places,

moving from the units to the left.

So now they could count to huge numbers and write them down.

And because they used the numbers in different ways they use signs to show what it was that they were doing with them,

a plus sign for adding them together,

a minus sign for taking away,

and signs for multiplying and dividing.

And the plus sign between two numbers works both ways,

two plus three is the same as three plus two,

but the minus sign gives different answers if you move in opposite directions,

because three minus two is one, but two minus three leaves us with a minus number.

In the same way, the multiply sign works both ways,

two times three gives the same number as three times two,

add two threes or add three twos and you still get six.

But when you use the divide sign it only goes one way,

four divided by two is not the same as two divided by four.

If there are four pizzas to be divided between two people they get two pizzas each,

but if there are two pizzas divided between four people, then each pizza has to be shared by two people,

The number before the division sign is shared out equally to the number that comes after,

4 '/. 2 = 2.

The division sign is not seen on keyboards, just in print and on calculators, as people stopped writing the dots and just left the numbers above and below the dividing line,

so 4/2=2.

Of course if you do have one pizza for two people you have one divided by two,

1/2

a half,

which is what is called a fraction.

And that just means what you get when the number on top is shared around between the number on the bottom.

If there's only one pizza and three people, each one of them only gets a third

1/3,

But apart from those signs that we use to show the ways that we are using the numbers,

there is another wonderful sign that shows the way that numbers work,

It is called the equals sign,

and it is the sign that means things balance on either side,

the two sides are equals.

Like 1+1=2.

And no matter how different the two sides look, the number that they are showing is actually the same.

So 2x3=2+2+2=6

and 3x2=3+3=4+2=6.

And people use calculators to work with numbers,

but it still makes it much easier if they at least learn the way the numbers build up when they multiply the numbers between 1 and 10 in their multiplication tables,

and get to know how the numbers work just using the numbers

1 to 100.

And if they look they can see the patterns in the numbers in the tables,

and the patterns in the numbers when you use them in certain ways.

Like if the number ends in 1 and you take away six, the answer will end in five.

21-6=15, 31-6=25, 41-6=35,

and so on.

The patterns give numbers their beauty, and make them beautiful to work with.