

We Only Have Nine Digits Unless We Use Zero - J3L2404
http://www.pioneerlocal.com/lakeforest/news/2845010,lake-forest-bobgarianocolumn-110410-s1.article

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zacharyvoase
There’s an issue with Ben’s logic when it comes to counting the number of
players, stemming from a confusion between ordinality and cardinality.

He’s correct that we _order_ things by matching them one-by-one to the natural
numbers (so there is such a thing as a 'zeroth' player, if you choose to look
at it that way). However, when we count the number of items in a set, we begin
by matching it against the empty set—that is our 'zero' in this context.

If the teacher wishes to demonstrate the error in Ben’s thinking, he need
simply remove players from the drawing until only one is left—so Ben would say
there are zero players in the drawing—and then remove that one.

Number theory isn’t easy, but I think Ben could do with a teacher with a
better grasp on it.

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zipdog
...but how does one represent eleven in this system?

