What is a Number?

 

What is a Number?

A number is a mathematical value used for counting or measuring or labelling objects. Numbers are used to performing arithmetic calculations.  Examples of numbers are natural numbers, whole numbers, rational and irrational numbers, etc. 0 is also a number that represents a null value. 

A number has many other variations such as even and odd numbers, prime and composite numbers. Even and odd terms are used when a number is divisible by 2 or not, whereas prime and composite differentiate between the numbers that have only two factors and more than two factors, respectively.

In a number system, these numbers are used as digits. 0 and 1 are the most common digits in the number system, that are used to represent binary numbers. On the other hand, 0 to 9 digits are also used for other number systems. Let us learn here the types of number systems.