Recently, in our Discovering Maths module we were asked to come up with our own number system. This proved to be a lot more difficult than I thought it would be. How can you come up with another symbol rather than the numeral we are use to to represent a number?!

Myself and my partner Holly, managed to come up with a system but this was based on the base 10 system.

This is the system that we came up with.

We decided to use circles and squares to represent our numbers. We used circles to represent odd numbers and circles inside squares to represent even numbers. After, we had came up with this we realised we had not included a symbol for zero. We were not sure what to use for zero, and after a while we decided zero would be represented by a plain dot.

I underestimated how hard it would be to come up with my very own number system. To think ‘outside of the box’ and away from the numerals that we are use to to represent our numbers was really difficult. It look a long time to think of what we could use. It also took a few attempts of trying different ideas and trying to think of a system that could be easily used. We did not go as far as what we would do for any numbers past nine as it was hard enough to get to nine. We would more than likely use the symbols we already have to create other numbers.

Even though we did not manage to go further than nine, other people in the class did manage to go further up the number line.