Summary

1. can be used for many different purposes including, to convey information, make and discover patterns, estimate magnitudes, pose and solve puzzles, and play and win games.

2. Thinking about and formulating set procedures to use numbers for these purposes is a useful skill and capacity (called ‘computational thinking’).

3. Many problems about numbers can be very to pose, but very to solve. Indeed, numerous such problems are still unsolved (for example, Collatz’s Conjecture).