I have ten little fingers and they all belong to me.
I can make them do things - just you wait and see.
I can shut them up tight, and open them wide.
I can put them together or make them all hide.
I can make them jump high; I can make them jump low.
I can fold them quietly and hold them just so.
I have ten little fingers and they all belong to me.
Do you have ten fingers too? Let me see…
One…two..three..four..five..six..seven..eight..nine..ten!
As I count, I point at each one of her fingers until all ten have been accounted for and then to signal completion I lean over and tickle her until she squeals in delight.
Ten is a number that makes sense to me. I have ten fingers, ten toes, and can multiply ten much more easily than any other number by simply bumping that number into the front end of 10 to make 50 or 80 or even 1200. While ten fits comfortably into my framework of the countable world, this hasn’t always been the case amongst mathematicians of the world.
The ancient Mayans, for instance, used a base number of twenty in their calculations, twenty being the total number of digits on the human body. Their written system of numerals made working with twenty fairly easy – four horizontal bars above one another represented twenty units of five each, with individual units represented by a dot. Fourteen was thus denoted as two bars with four dots above. Click here for a more detailed explanation of Mayan mathematics.
Counting systems based on units of five and twenty have also been found in Papua New Guinea. Other cultural traditions have used varying methods of counting, some by twos, some by fours, up until sixty, as with the ancient Sumerians.
Mathematics is used, consciously or not, in a variety of cultural activities: in the creation and ornamentation of architectural structures; in figuring kin relations; in activities such as sewing, weaving, and beading; in hunting and navigation; in agricultural work such as laying out plots or understanding weather patterns and seasonal scheduling; in cooking and trade; in recreational activities such as gambling and gaming; as well as in spiritual symbolism.
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