Oddbean new post about login | logout When you learned to count, did you start at 0 or 1? #askstr #asknostr
Pretty sure it was 1🤔. How about you?
1. 0 is actually an abstract concept. For how can you count nothing when it doesn't exist?
You can count a fraction of something. My daughter picked up the habit of saying “0”, then “1”. (I think she got it from school.) I was surprised, but I think it’s a good habit for a kid to adopt. It’ll probably help when she’s formally introduced to concepts like fractions & integers. There’s something between “0” and “1”.
You may be able to calculate a fraction of something. However calculation any fraction of zero is impossible. For there is nothing that can be divided up into smaller parts when there is nothing which exists in the first place.
Why would you start at 0? Isn’t the whole point of counting because there is more than 0? No practicality in someone saying „count how many apples there are“ and you see none.
Cut an apple into 4 equal parts. 4 people, 1 quarter each. Conceptually, I think it may be easier for a child to grasp a quatity greater than 0 but less than 1 if they start learning "0" early.
In my childhood it started with 1. And when I learned computer science I re-learned counting - it starts from 0 and ends with 1.