Natural Numbers. No 0, then how come 10?
If natural numbers are defined to NOT include 0. Why do they include numbers with digits 0??
If natural numbers are defined to NOT include 0. Why do they include numbers with digits 0??
Hi Arnav, good question! What the natural numbers have in common is that they represent a quantity of whole items, say students.
0 alone represents no students, so it does not qualify to be called a natural number. All other whole, positive numbers qualify.
When you write "10 students" you don't actually have one special kind of student that is called a ten-student and zero one-students. If your ten students got instantly merged into this super-student, then you could make the claim that 10 students meant there were 0 students. But that's not happening.
We just write this way as a kind of shorthand. It is very convenient to write the the number as 13 rather than \\\\\\\\\\\\\ . So the 0 is given a new meaning when it is used to write multi digit numbers.Giving the symbol 0 these different meanings is strange and wonderful!
Post ist für Kommentare geschlossen.