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The concept of numbers can be a difficult one to master for many people, but that doesn't make it an inherently difficult concept. It just takes a little bit of memorization, practice, and persistence.
In the first of a series of Hillary supporter math tutorials, we are going to start with the basics: Just what is a number, and how are they used to count things?
The traditional way people learn about numbers is to ask the following simple question: How many apples does little Jenny have in her basket?
If Jenny doesn't have any apples in her basket, we say she has "zero apples". Congratulations! You have just learned your first number. The number is called "zero", and it is defined to mean "nothing", or "none". If Jenny has no apples, then she, by definition, has zero of them.
Now let's pretend that Jenny's mommy gave her a single apple for lunch, If Jenny eats that apple, then she will have no apples. We already know that after Jenny eats the apple, she will have zero apples. But how many apples does she have before she eats it?
The answer to the previous question is "one". "One" (pronounced "won") is the next number after zero. It is defined to mean that you have a single something (in our example, an apple), and if you were to lose, throw away, or eat that single something, you wouldn't have any left. (Or, as you have just learned, you'd have zero).
Now it gets easy. Once you fully understand the concept of zero and one, the rest of the numbers are very simple to understand. If Jenny has one apple, and Stacey, her best friend, has one apple, then how many apples would Jenny have if Stacey gave Jenny her apple? The answer is our next number, which we call the number "two". Now say Jerry also had one apple, and since he has a crush on Jenny, Jerry also gives Jenny his apple. Jenny previously had two apples, but after Jerry gives Jenny his apple, Jenny has our next number of apples, which we call the number "three".
Get it? Every time one apple is given to Jenny by someone else, the number of apples she has is given a new name. Her mother gave her "one", after Stacey gave her one, she had "two", after Jerry gave her one, she had "three". This, of course, can continue. Here are the numbers you've learned so far, as well as the numbers that come after three. You simply need to memorize these:
Zero
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
In order to make things easier to write down, each number has been given a symbol. You can find these symbols near the top of your keyboard. Here are the numbers, along with their symbols. Memorize them.
Zero - 0
One - 1
Two - 2
Three - 3
Four - 4
Five - 5
Six - 6
Seven - 7
Eight - 8
Nine - 9
And there you have it. Our next lesson will be about how to use these symbols in different combinations to define the numbers that come after nine, also known as "place value". Then we can move on to arithmetic. Until then, happy counting!
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