
www.VirtualNerd.com
What is Place Value?
What is place value?
Summary
- Place value is used to help us organize numbers and understand their value
- Digits have different values depending on where they are in a number
- The decimal point is the period between 3 and 4
- We can get more and more place values as we move to the left
- Notice how the names to the right of the decimal point all end in 'th'
- This is how we tell them apart from the places to the left of the decimal!
- Just like on the left, we'll get more and more places as we move to the right

Notes
-
-
-
- We use place value to help us organize numbers and understand their value
- The digit 5 is in the 'hundreds place' of the number 500
-
-
- Digits have different values depending on where they are in a number
- We use place value to determine the value of a digit
-
- This number has a decimal that ends: a terminating decimal
-
- 'Million', 'thousand', 'hundred', and 'ten-thousandths' indicate place values
-
- These place values tell us how much each digit is actually worth in a number!
-
-
- The place just to the left of the decimal point is the 'ones place'
- The decimal point is the period between 3 and 4
- If we just had the number 3 by itself, we would have 3 ones
- But since it's in the ones place in our larger number, it's worth 3 ones there too!
-
- Notice that 10 has TWO digits: 1 and 0
- So the tens place is the place TWO to the left of the decimal
- The digit of 4 that is just to the left of 3 is in the 'tens place'
-
- Putting a 0 after 10 gives us 100, which tells us what the next place value to the left will be
-
- Since 1,000 has 4 digits, the 'thousands place' is 4 places to the left of the decimal
- Since 10,000 has 5 digits, the 'ten-thousands place' is 5 places to the left of the decimal
- Since 100,000 has 6 digits, the 'hundred-thousands place' is 6 places to the left of the decimal
- Since 1,000,000 has 7 digits, the 'millions place' is 7 places to the left of the decimal
-
- The same pattern continues as you continue to the left!
-
-
- The decimal point is the period between 3 and 4
-
- The digit just to the right of the decimal point can be written as that digit over 10
-
- As we move to the right, we add zeros to the denominator of the fraction
- The new denominator tells us the name of the new place!
- .04 = 4/100 = 4 hundredths
-
- As we add more places to the right, we add more zeros to the denominator of the fraction
- 0.004 is the same as 4/1000, so we call this the 'thousandths' place
- 0.0004 is the same as 4/10,000, so we call this the 'ten-thousandths' place
-
- The 'th' means that place is to the right of the decimal point
- This is very important to remember!
-
- The 'th' means that place is to the right of the decimal point
- 5 hundred dollars and 5 hundredths of a dollar are very different amounts
- Be sure to use the 'th' correctly!