Video Transcript
Compare 251 and 234. Which number is greater?
In this question, we’re given a
pair of three-digit numbers, 251 and 234. And we’re told to compare them. We need to find which number is
greater. In other words, which is the
largest number? Now underneath the question, we can
see a place value grid. And place value grids are really
helpful when we’re comparing numbers. Do you know why? It’s because they help us to see
numbers in terms of the value of their digits, in this case, the hundreds, the tens,
and the ones. Now which digit should we start
comparing first? Is this like column addition and we
need to start with the ones and move from right to left? Should we start with the hundreds
and work from left to right? Or doesn’t it matter?
If we think for a moment about the
value of each part of our number, we know that the hundreds are worth a lot more
than the tens or ones. And because they’re worth a lot
more, we need to start by comparing them. They make the biggest difference to
our numbers. So let’s start by comparing the
hundreds digits in our numbers. We can see that both of our numbers
begin with the digit two. They’re both 200 and something. And because the hundred digits are
exactly the same, we can’t separate these numbers. We can’t see which one is greater
yet. And so this is why we move along
down the number to the place with the next greatest value. And that’s the tens digits.
The number 251 has five 10s, and
the number 234 has three 10s. These are different, so they’re
gonna help us compare the numbers. We know five 10s are greater than
three 10s. And now we can see which number’s
greater. It doesn’t matter what the ones
show us. We’ve compared the hundreds and
they were the same. So we moved on to the tens, and we
saw that one lot of ten was greater than the other. 251 is greater than 234. The number that’s greater is
251.
