Yes, sorry, my point didn’t come across very well. What’s quite interesting is to ask pupils to assign numbers to their fingers and thumbs: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Yes, sorry, my point didn’t come across very well. What’s quite interesting is to ask pupils to assign numbers to their fingers and thumbs: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 ... X? It’s a good way of introducing positional number systems, and the... paradox? quandary? quirk?.. of how base N never includes a symbol for N, and how N in base N is always ‘10’. See also: asking pupils to divide 12345* by 67, taught in the context of arithmetic and logical shifting. (*base 67)