Arithmetic/Zero and Numbers Greater Than Nine

This page explores more numbers by getting higher and lower than the previously introduced numbers 1-9.

Zero

What happens when you want to show with math that there is nothing? This is where we use the number zero (0). Zero can be achieved by subtracting any number by itself. For example:

$3-3=0$

Numbers Larger than Nine

So far we have learned about nine different numbers. But what if we want to count higher than nine? This is where we use numbers that have more than one digit. The simplest of these numbers are:

$9+1=10$

At first, this looks like nonsense. How can nine and one make "one-zero"? But the "one-zero", called ten is actually a number in itself. Since there is more than one digit, all but the first digit represent numbers larger than nine. 10 can be rewritten as:

$(1*10)+(0*1)$

that is to say:

The number 10 is equal to the total of one ten and zero ones.

Let's use another number, 58 (fifty-eight), to explain more. The number 58 can be rewritten as:

$(5*10)+(8*1)$

that is to say:

The number 58 is equal to the total of five tens and eight ones.

Therefore, we can safely say that the position of the digits affects its value, that is, our number system (also known as decimal or base-10), is positional.