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Overview

Numbers Can Tell Us Things

April 10, 2024
1 min read
logic reasoning

What are numbers telling us?

Sometimes numbers don’t just count objects; they describe a relationship. Consider a game played by children standing in a line.

The Rules

Imagine children standing in a line. Each child looks at their immediate neighbors (left and right).

  • Say ‘1’ if there is only one taller child standing next to them.
  • Say ‘2’ if both children standing next to them are taller.
  • Say ‘0’ if neither of the children standing next to them are taller (i.e., the speaker is taller than both neighbors).
Note

Note: Children at the ends of the line only have one neighbor. If that neighbor is taller, they say ‘1’. If that neighbor is shorter, they say ‘0’. They can never say ‘2’.

Visualizing the Logic

Let’s analyze a scenario with 5 children. We represent their heights visually.

Line of Children

Child A

Child B

Child C

Child D

Child E

If we assign heights:

  1. Child A (Short) - Neighbor B is Taller →\rightarrow Says 1
  2. Child B (Tall) - Neighbors A and C are Shorter →\rightarrow Says 0
  3. Child C (Short) - Neighbors B and D are Taller →\rightarrow Says 2
  4. Child D (Tall) - Neighbors C and E are Shorter →\rightarrow Says 0
  5. Child E (Short) - Neighbor D is Taller →\rightarrow Says 1

The sequence would be: 1, 0, 2, 0, 1.

This activity teaches us that numbers can encode local geometry or ordering information.