Why Do We Count to Ten?

Counting to ten is like having a special set of blocks you use to build numbers. Imagine if instead of ten, we had five or twenty, it would change how we count and do math! You can start with one block, then add more until you reach your number limit. If you count only up to five, you’d need new blocks after that. It’s like having a different set of building blocks for each group of numbers.

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Examples

Imagine you have only five blocks and need more than that, so you add a new row of blocks to count.
If you had eight fingers, maybe you’d use base-8 instead of base-10 when counting.
You can count up to ten with your fingers, but if you had extra fingers, you'd be able to go even higher.

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Categories: Math · counting· base systems· number theory· math history