Counting

Counting is the action of finding the number of elements of a finite set of objects. The traditional way of counting consists of continually increasing a (mental or spoken) counter by a unit for every element of the set, in some order, while marking (or displacing) those elements to avoid visiting the same element more than once, until no unmarked elements are left; if the counter was set to one after the first object, the value after visiting the final object gives the desired number of elements. The related term enumeration refers to uniquely identifying the elements of a finite (combinatorial) set or infinite set by assigning a number to each element.

Counting sometimes involves numbers other than one; for example, when counting money, counting out change, "counting by twos" (2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, ...), or "counting by fives" (5, 10, 15, 20, 25, ...).

There is archeological evidence suggesting that humans have been counting for at least 50,000 years. Counting was primarily used by ancient cultures to keep track of social and economic data such as number of group members, prey animals, property, or debts (i.e., accountancy). The development of counting led to the development of mathematical notation, numeral systems, and writing.

Counting can occur in a variety of forms.

Counting can be verbal; that is, speaking every number out loud (or mentally) to keep track of progress. This is often used to count objects that are present already, instead of counting a variety of things over time.

Counting can also be in the form of tally marks, making a mark for each number and then counting all of the marks when done tallying. This is useful when counting objects over time, such as the number of times something occurs during the course of a day. Tallying is base 1 counting; normal counting is done in base 10. Computers use base 2 counting (0's and 1's).

Counting can also be in the form of finger counting, especially when counting small numbers. This is often used by children to facilitate counting and simple mathematical operations. Finger-counting uses unary notation (one finger = one unit), and is thus limited to counting 10 (unless you start in with your toes). Older finger counting used the four fingers and the three bones in each finger (phalanges) to count to the number twelve. Other hand-gesture systems are also in use, for example the Chinese system by which one can count 10 using only gestures of one hand. By using finger binary (base 2 counting), it is possible to keep a finger count up to 1023 = 2¹⁰ − 1.

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