Talk:Number

August 2023

I'm updating the caption for the image. D Lazard if you don't like this you can keep reverting me to your own satisfaction. And maybe you will win over me but eventually the truth will prevail. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.227.223.203 (talk) 10:48, 29 July 2023 (UTC)

Title - should it be Numbers rather than Number

Just "Number" feels a bit strange - in the rest of the article, the word "Numbers" is used much more often Jhadden23 (talk) 14:41, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

No. Per WP:SINGULAR, the title should not be pluralized. Since there are many such objects (numbers), referring to them in the plural is common.—Anita5192 (talk) 15:33, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

Grammar correction

Before reference 4, you have “ (and its combinations with real numbers by adding or subtracting its multiples).” It should be “(and it's combinations with real number by adding or subtracting it's multiples).” PP3CATWSPofficial (talk) 09:24, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

No: this text correctly uses the pronoun "its" (meaning "of it"), which does not contain an apostrophe. It's would be an abbreviation for "it is combinations" or possibly "it has combinations", which are not the intended meaning here. Certes (talk) 09:45, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

Oh yeah, you are right. I confused it with another rule, sorry! PP3CATWSPofficial (talk) 10:03, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

The distinctions among counting, measuring, and labelling

"A number is a mathematical object used to count, measure, and label. The most basic examples are the natural numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, and so forth. Numbers can be represented in language with number words."

That's just real nice! However, the terms count, measure and label, all mean the same thing wrt number.

To count means to measure (notice?) in terms of the abstract unit. Once the counting or measuring is done, then we give the measure a name (same as "label", eh?).

Please take some time to revise this garbage article. It will benefit humanity in a way you cannot imagine!

https://www.academia.edu/125757733/Realisation_and_Development_of_Number_in_1_Page

Also, teach the four basic operations of arithmetic using ratios of magnitudes before a child learns about numbers:

https://www.academia.edu/124828666/Gabriel_arithmetic_without_numbers_a_method_based_on_Thales_proportionality_theorem

2A02:587:AF2D:8700:65F7:8F4D:5ED5:BA5E (talk) 08:09, 11 December 2024 (UTC)

In the perhaps unlikely event that you ever come back and read this, here are some comments on the nature of the three processes you referred to.

• I have a piece of string, and I wish to know how long it is. I put it against a ruler marked in millimetres, and find it is 127mm long; that is to say that it is 127 times as long as an arbitrarily chosen standard length called a "millimetre". I could have measured it instead against some other, equally arbitrary, standard length, and concluded that it was 5 inches long, or 12.7 centimetres, or 0.1389 yards, etc etc. Or I could have measured it in millimetres, but with a measuring instrument with a higher precision than my ruler, and concluded that it it 127.312mm long. That is what measuring is.
• I have some more pieces of string, and wish to know how many, so I check them, and find there are seven of them. I don't have to specify a unit, such as a millimetre, or a gram, or an hour, because there are just seven of them, and that is absolute, it is not a comparison with some arbitrary unit. I also don't need to consider a using a greater degree of precision, because there are just seven pieces: I know there can't be 7.183 pieces. That is what counting is.
• When I was a child, there were two slightly different versions of the bus route which came near to our house, which were called the 29 bus and the 29a bus. Then the people who ran the bus service decided they preferred to use just numbers, without letters. It made sense to have adjacent numbers for routes which were almost the same, and the numbers 28 & 30 were already allocated to other routes, so 29 & 29a were replaced by 90 & 91. There was no change in any measurement: neither the buses nor the bus routes became bigger. There was no change in any count: there were not suddenly more buses than there had been. What changed was the way that the buses were labelled.
• As for the way you chose to express yourself in suggesting to other people that it might be a good idea to consider making changes to the article, you may like to consider whether there might have been a better way of putting it. However, I expect you won't, will you? JBW (talk) 11:51, 11 December 2024 (UTC)