Addition

Assume that as a young person you do a lot of Counting and you tend to put objects into piles. You might notice things like 3 and 6 is 9 before anyone officially teaches you addition.

Previously we told you that when you count you have to be counting something, like oranges or apples.

The word ‘add’ may be open somewhat to interpretation.

One person might tell you that we can’t add two things unless they are the same:

• 3 oranges + 4 oranges = 7 oranges

A second person might say that we can add things that are different, it’s just that we won’t see 3 and 4 go to 7:

• 3 apples + 4 oranges = 3 apples + 4 oranges

This idea will appear later. We will start with a box that has four numbers in it:

{2,3,4,5}

In one story all four numbers combine to give us 14.

In another story they remain separate and then we find that each is attached to a different unit.

{2 ix, 3 iy, 4 jx, 5 jy}