Numbers

Introduction

This is a series of exercises for developing a basic understanding of numbers, and also of the construction of numbers.

You probably know that once you have the idea of square root and the idea of -1, you can put the two together and create the imaginary numbers. I doubt that young children need to know about the imaginary numbers. But the same idea of construction can be used to create even the simplest of numbers.

So, how do you construct numbers? What are the numbers? Are fractions numbers? This is relevant to understanding what they are doing know with numbers. In algebra, the student will be exposed to these ideas. And few people make it to Cantor's different infinities, but that is the most elegant mathematics I know.

I used these as class discussions.

This section of the website is under construction.

Which Numbers Have Names?. Just listing the numbers that have names. This is not very mathematical (though I find it interesting). But I suspect it is an excellent segue into listing all of the numbers. (I suspect it is very good preparation for that exercise too.)

Listing All the Numbers. This is just what it seems to be -- the goal is to list all of the numbers. You would sooner or later introduce the etcetera rule -- you can say 1,2,3... and the dots mean to keep going. The interesting point to this ex