Video Transcript
Write the number shown in
digits.
We can write and show numbers in
lots of different ways. The picture shows a number modeled
using an abacus, and we’re told to write the number that it shows in digits. So, let’s begin by looking at our
abacus. What can we tell about the number
that we need to write? Firstly, we can see that underneath
our abacus, there are some letters, and these label the different place values of
our number.
We already know that O stands for
ones, T stands for tens, and the letter H is for hundreds. But in this question, we’re moving
on to a fourth place. The letters Th stand for
thousands. And because our number has four
places, thousands, hundreds, tens, and ones, we know that we’re going to need four
digits to show it. Let’s count how many beads are
representing each place.
There are one, two 1000s. So, we’re going to need to use the
digit two in the thousands place. Then there are one, two, three,
four 100s. So, we need to write the digit four
in the hundreds place. There are one, two, three, four,
five, six 10s. And there are two ones. Our number is 2462. Now, we could just write our four
digits in a row like this. But as we learn about larger and
larger numbers, writing digits in a string like this can make it harder for us to
see what each one’s worth. And that’s why we can think of our
digits in groups of three.
We’ve got our hundreds, tens, and
ones on the end. And we can think of our thousands
as being part of a new group. And that’s why we can write our
digits with a small gap in between the thousands and the hundreds digit or, as we’re
going to do here, we could put a comma. And whenever we see that comma, it
helps us remember that the digit before it is the thousands digit. We’ve written the number shown on
the abacus using four digits. We recognize the number as 2462,
and we can write this number as two comma four six two.
