What is place value in Math?
Let’s look at the number 587.
In this number, the digit 5 is in the hundreds place, the digit 8 is in the tens place, and the digit 7 is in the ones place.
This means that the number 587 can be written as:
- 5 hundreds, or 500
- 8 tens, or 80
- 7 ones
We can write this out using place value as:
- 5 x 100 + 8 x 10 + 7 x 1 = 500 + 80 + 7 = 587
So when we see the number 587, we know that it represents “5 hundreds, 8 tens, and 7 ones.” And we can use place value to understand the value of each digit and how to combine them to find the total value of the number.