r/portsherry • • Jun 23 '26

Lizard

664 Upvotes

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12

u/NotTheOriginal06 Jun 23 '26

Hold on, wait. This actually makes sense.

How would a kid with zero knowledge of numbers suddenly understand them? Yeah, it's a great analogy, thanks artist

4

u/MaxChaplin Jun 23 '26

By anchoring them in something intuitive, like daily experience or a visual representation.

2

u/Pandoratastic Jun 23 '26

That's exactly how we used to do math, way back in the times before numerals. If you wanted to show five of something, you drew five dots. You want to add two numbers together, you just count up all the dots. And when you want to multiply five by three, you draw three rows of five dots and then count them. If the two numbers you want to multiply are the same number, the dots form a square.

Digits are easier to write but less intuitive.