ABSTRACT
This chapter asks “what if not ten?” when presenting numerals in written form. Exhibiting some scepticism over introducing “other bases”, Freudenthal wrote: Innovators like to do a lot with structures in other bases. Numerous studies have described students’ difficulties in understanding place value, which in turn hinders their ability to grasp multi-digit addition and subtraction. To introduce idea of place value representation of numbers, Egan, in his book Teaching as Story Telling, describes a story of counsellors assisting a king in counting his army. Bass describes such activity carried out with class of prospective elementary school teachers, using over 2000 wooden sticks and rubber bands. In English, the reference to word “weight” can be confusing, as the text task refers to weights of 40 objects as well as to objects used as standards in order to determine the weight of objects on a balance scale. For some decimal and non-decimal fractions, the repeating cycle starts immediately after the decimal/separating point.
