Arithmetic
📖 In short
Arithmetic is the science of numbers. It answers lots of questions in our lives: how many children are in the class? How much do the sweets cost? How much time is left? It has four basic operations: addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.
🤩 Did you know?
- Arithmetic is sometimes called “the science of numbers”.
- 8 ÷ 4 equals 2.
- The fraction ¾ equals 0.75.
- Al-Khwarizmi wrote important arithmetic books more than a thousand years ago.
🔎 Find out more
🌟 The four operations
Addition puts things together (+), subtraction takes some away (-), multiplication is quick addition of equal numbers (×), and division shares out equally (÷).
🔍 Place value
A digit's place in a number decides its value: in 352, the 3 means three hundreds, the 5 five tens, and the 2 two ones.
💡 Fractions and decimals
Not all numbers are whole: half an apple is a fraction we write ½. We can also write fractions as decimals: a half equals 0.5, and three quarters equals 0.75.
🎯 Arithmetic in our lives
We use arithmetic for buying and selling, in cooking to measure amounts, for telling the time, in sport to count points, and for sharing sweets fairly between brothers and sisters!
📸 More pictures
🧩 Test yourself
1 How many basic operations are there in arithmetic?
2 In the number 352, what is the 3 worth?
3 Which picture shows “Arithmetic”?