Million-Number Masters

🌍 Did you know the Earth is about 12,742 kilometres wide? Or that a busy airport might handle 487,000 passengers in a single week? Numbers this big are everywhere — in science, sport, geography, and the news. Today you are going to become a Million-Number Master. You will learn how to read and write numbers all the way up to 1,000,000 (one million), put them in order, round them sensibly, and even travel below zero with negative numbers. Get ready — this is where maths gets seriously powerful!

Every large number is built from place-value columns. Each column is worth exactly ten times the column to its right. Starting from the right: ones (1), tens (10), hundreds (100), thousands (1,000), ten-thousands (10,000), hundred-thousands (100,000), and millions (1,000,000). The digit sitting in each column tells you how many of that value you have. In 347,256 the digit 3 is in the hundred-thousands column, so it represents 300,000. The digit 4 is in the ten-thousands column and represents 40,000. Understanding which column a digit sits in is the key to everything that follows.

To order and compare large numbers, line up the digits in their place-value columns and compare from left to right — start at the highest-value column and move right until you find a difference. For example, comparing 563,400 and 536,400: both have 5 in the hundred-thousands column, but the ten-thousands digits differ (6 vs 3), so 563,400 is greater. We write this as 563,400 > 536,400. The symbols > (greater than) and < (less than) always point towards the smaller number, like a hungry crocodile eating the bigger meal! 🐊

Rounding means replacing an exact number with a nearby, simpler number. The rule is always the same: find the rounding digit (the column you are rounding to), look at the digit immediately to its right (the decider digit), and apply the rule — if the decider is 0, 1, 2, 3, or 4, round down (keep the rounding digit the same); if the decider is 5, 6, 7, 8, or 9, round up (add 1 to the rounding digit). All digits to the right become zeros. Example: round 374,816 to the nearest 10,000. The ten-thousands digit is 7. The decider is 4. Round down — answer: 370,000.

When you count forwards and backwards through zero, think of a lift in a building: floors above ground are positive (1, 2, 3...) and floors below ground are negative (-1, -2, -3...). Zero is the ground floor. If a temperature is -6°C and rises by 9 degrees, you count forward 9 places: -6, -5, -4, -3, -2, -1, 0, 1, 2, 3. The answer is 3°C. The difference between two temperatures — for example -4°C and 5°C — is found by counting the steps between them: that is 9 steps, so the difference is 9 degrees.