Serendipity Daily Thoughts

Welcome back. Maybe you, kind readers, are wondering why I am still writing about numbers. Well, it is as simple as that I want to introduce more interesting facts related to this topic.

As I briefly mentioned in the last post, numbers we currently use can be divided into four different types. Actually, there seem to be several ways to put numbers into different categories around the world, but for today’s writing, I would like to focus on division related to our daily life.

The first category is representative number. One familiar example is the numbers printed on shirts that sport players wear during matches. The number itself does not have any quantitative meanings. It only gives a name to the player so that the player can be distinguished from others. Therefore, it does not make sense to add up these numbers, as well as lining up the numbers in orders.

The second category is ordered number. The Olympics was held in Italy recently, and we often saw who got the first place and who could not get into the top three. The numbers discussed in this context can be regarded as a ordered number, because the number represent the order of things that happened. Although it is meaningful to rearrange objects in orders according to given numbers, it is still not meaningless to add up those numbers.

The third category is comparative number. This type of number can be arranged in orders, as well as it can be added or subtracted. One of the examples is the temperature. For example, it was around 10 degrees celsius in Tokyo yesterday, and it is around 15 degrees celsius today. Therefore, we can conclude that it is 5 degrees warmer today than yesterday. However, it is somewhat weird to describe today’s temperature as 1.5 times warmer than yesterday. This is mainly because 0 degrees celsius does not mean that there is no heat. In other words, we cannot compare two different comparative numbers in terms of multiplication, because their origin, which is 0, does not often mean “nothing”.

The last category is measurable number. This type is also commonly used around the world, such as in the field of construction, economy, and business. Similar but slightly different from the comparative number, this type can be arranged in orders, added, and multiplied. The number “0” represents “nothing”, so multiplication can work well. One example close to our daily life is that if one apple costs $1, purchasing two apples cost $2, doubled price.

Number can be found everywhere in our daily life – maybe it is almost impossible not to encounter any numbers as we go out. It possibly means that numbers are deeply rooted in our society, so we could not have developed our society this well without utilizing numbers. Without numbers, we may be required to have another system to efficiently exchange items, because we can no longer evaluate value of items using numbers. In this sense, I would like to conclude that number is one of the significant innovations made by human beings.

Thank you for reading my writing to the end. I hope you enjoy coming new season! I would like to notify that I will not be ablet to leave posts for next three days, because I will have a vacation. I appreciate if you leave any comments on anything, including your favorite numbers and reasons for your choice!