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Just a few days ago I had an interesting conversation with my 4 year old son that went something like this: "Daddy, what's the biggest number?" "There is no s
by illumin8 10y ago
Just a few days ago I had an interesting conversation with my 4 year old son that went something like this:
"Daddy, what's the biggest number?"
"There is no such thing as the biggest number; numbers keep getting bigger and bigger forever. This is a concept called infinity."
"Which number is the biggest?"
And so on; he's only 4, so I don't expect him to grasp the concept of infinity, but I was impressed that he's already asking about it.
My son is in his first year of Montessori education, and has learned to count into two digit numbers already, and understands zero, but doesn't yet understand negative numbers. Montessori is fairly interesting because they teach math in a different way, by learning powers of 10 and using a bead system similar to an abacus, so Montessori educated kids can actually do simple arithmetic with large numbers (in the thousands) by around age 5.
- branchless 10y agoThere's a great anecdote about this. Son: the biggest number is 1081 Dad: what about 1082 Son: well, I was close
- overcast 10y agoClassic :)
- vmilner 10y agoTony Benn (UK politician) relates his grandson doing this in his diaries, but I've heard it related many times and suspect it doesn't come from that single source.
- branchless 10y agoI expect as well as being borrowed many times it's also happened many times.
- knicholes 10y agoI'm not sure if this is normal or expected, but my two-year-old can count to 20. I'm not trying to brag-- maybe just seeing if maybe I should start bragging? ;)
- thrownear 10y agoHow did you find it out?
- kyberias 10y agoIt's not particularly exceptional. Yet, some kids don't start talking until they're 2+. That's normal too.
- irrational 10y agoNot really. We lived in an apartment from the time our youngest daughter was born until she was 2 or so. There was no elevator so we would count the stairs when we went up. I don't recall how many stairs there were, but she could count higher than 20 because of that. Of course she was a bit precocious. We were at university at the time and the only people she interacted with were other university students (no other kids around). By the time she was 2 she was fully fluent and could carry on lengthy conversation with any adult as if she was a college student. It was quite amusing.
- 83457 10y agoHad a near exact conversation with my then 5 year old. He got really frustrated during the discussion as he wanted a straight answer but later understood what I meant.