Count

“ A specific ten thousand persons present is much more effective and, being a round number, is a sufficient indication that no actual count has been made. In all cases where there is a choice between a specific and a general term, the specific one should be used. ”

“ Many men might have been handsomer, but certainly there could be none whose appearance was more significant, if the expression may be used. Everything about the count seemed to have its meaning, for the constant habit of thought which he had acquired had given an ease and vigor to the expression of his face, and even to the most trifling gesture, scarcely to be understood. ”

“ Such a child may count correctly from the point of view of a grown-up listener, without having any idea of numbers at all. The operation of counting, in fact, can only be intelligently performed by a person who already has some idea what the numbers are; and from this it follows that counting does not give the logical basis of number. ”

“ In other words, whenever you actually count you count something other than the names of the numbers you employ, and you count it in an order which depends on the character of the particular things counted. ”

“ The Count, who knows that he is in no way to blame, tries every method of alienating her. Coming upon her in his stable one night, he thrusts her aside with his foot, and more than once he threatens her with his dog-whip. ”

“ On the whole, the grouping method refers mainly to concrete numbers and the counting method to abstract numbers. If we sort objects into groups of ten, and find that there are five groups of ten with three over, we regard the five and the three as names for the actual sets of groups or of individuals. The three, for instance, are regarded as a whole when we name them three. If, however, we count these three as one, two, three, then the number of times we count is an abstract number. Thus number in the abstract is the number of times that the act of counting is performed in any particular case. ”

“ I have often admonished my pupils to count ten before speaking. Were I you, Mr. Philander, I should count at least a thousand, and then maintain a discreet silence." ”

“ I count, but I count, in ordinary life, what I take to be real objects, existent quite apart from my counting. Suppose that I count ships seen from the shore. There, says common sense, are the ships, sailing by themselves, and quite indifferent to whether anybody counts them or not. In advance of the counting, the ships, in so far as they are a real collection, have their number. ”

“ I noticed some of the company prepare their mouths and draw themselves up at the prospect of some agreeable forfeit. "Let us play at counting," said Charlotte. "Now, pay attention: I shall go round the circle from right to left; and each person is to count, one after the other, the number that comes to him, and must count fast; whoever stops or mistakes is to have a box on the ear, and so on, till we have counted a thousand." ”

“ When the fingers and toes of the person counting are exhausted, he has recourse to those of another person, if he wishes to count further, although he has then passed the limit of numerical phraseology. ”

“ And persons have been known who were able by habit, or by a peculiar natural aptitude, to count by dozens as rapidly as common persons can by units. We may conclude, therefore, that when we appear to catch a small number by a single glance of the eye, we do in fact count the units of it in a regular, though very brief succession. To count requires an act of memory. Of this we are sensible when we count very slowly, as when we reckon the strokes of a church-clock; for in such a case we may forget in the intervals of the strokes, and miscount. ”

“ This, of course, is unintelligible on the grouping system of treating number; on the counting system it merely means that we count backwards from 0, just as we might count inches backwards from a point marked 0 on a scale. It should be remembered that the counting is performed with something as unit. If this unit is A, then what we are really considering is −4A; and this means, not that A is multiplied by −4, but that A is multiplied by 4, and the product is taken negatively. ”

“ As an instance the word cent exists in every language, but cent in French consists only of four letters placed side by side one after the other, and would never be anything else to us if we could not count; but to count is to add and to take away, that is to say, addition and subtraction, thus to conceive and name; in order to possess a hundred objects, it does not suffice to see them only, it is necessary to count them up to the hundred. ”

“ The Count is noble-minded; but he is proud, irascible, easily induced to believe the worst of those who surround him, and obstinate in retaining prejudices once received—these are the 62parts of his character, upon which it must be your care to work, till you have kindled a flame against Ida in his bosom, which all her tears will be unable to extinguish. ”

“ That is our ordinary way of counting. The speculative computation is quite different. Each of the things is always that thing plus me. So that supposing the things to be represented by the figures 1, 2, 3, 4, and ourselves by the figure 5, while following the ordinary ciphering, we should count them and ourselves as 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 ”

“ Here are the count’s notes; they are most of them incomprehensible, owing to the abbreviations he used: probably he thought he would have future opportunities of examining the hieroglyphics, but the most important is clear enough, it runs thus: ‘Let the serpent be thy guide on thy right hand.’ This the count told me referred to the direction to be followed: that is to say, in going and returning through the labyrinth of apartments we must follow the direction in which the figure of the serpent appeared to be travelling. The rest of the notes you can look over at your leisure, if you like. ”

“ We count when we co-ordinate in turn one member of a group after another with the members of the number series that succeed one another until [86] the group to be counted is exhausted. The last number required for the co-ordination is called the sum of the members of the counted group. Since the number series continues indefinitely, every given group can be counted. ”

“ But the one primitive method of counting which seems to have been almost universal throughout all time is the finger method. It is a matter of common experience and observation that every child, when he begins to count, turns instinctively to his fingers; and, with these convenient aids as counters, tallies off the little number he has in mind. This method is at once so natural and obvious that there can be no doubt that it has always been employed by savage tribes, since the first appearance of the human race in remote antiquity. ”

“ He runs up a few rounds of the multiplication table just to see if they are all there. He ceases to think at all, looks steadily out of the window and sees nothing. He ceases to count anything in the census. ”

“ In time the private lord, who had never been an officer of the state, assumed the old administrative titles and called himself count or viscount, and perhaps with some sort of right, for his position in his territories, through the development of the immunity, did not differ from that now held by the man who had been originally a count. ”

“ It is easy for any two people to count the number of men in a room and to agree as to the result; but ask them to say how many tall men, how many with black hair, how many blue-eyed, how many straight-nosed—and you will get a different result each time. ”

“ Counting is fundamental, and counting that is spontaneous, free from sensible observation, and from the strain of reason. A study of these original methods shows that multiplication was developed out of counting, and not from addition as nearly all textbooks treat it. Multiplication is counting. When children count by 4's, etc., they accent the same as counting gymnastics or music. When a child now counts on its fingers it simply reproduces a stage in the growth of the civilization of all nations. ”

“ said the count; “tell me till you are weary, that I have restored you to happiness; you do not know how much I require this assurance.” ”

“ Study until you see just how it is done.
A count of 1–2, should be used for one h, and a count of 1–2, 3–4, 5–6, 7–8, 9–10, for a group of five. From fourteen to fifteen groups of five should be made in a minute.
Study an inverted h, and if correctly made you will see that in that position it is small y. At this point it would be well to study and practice small y. Count 1–2, 3–4, 5–6, 7–8, 9–10, for each group of five.
Drill 52
LESSON 48
Review lessons forty-seven and forty-eight, and then give attention to the following. ”

“ But the prescriptions of reason are absolute, unchanging, of universal validity; to count by tens is the easiest way of counting—that is a proposition of which everyone, from here to the Antipodes, feels the force ”

“ Once more, the child is made to count, and in the process his conceptions of number are cast into a decimal shape, one in which each higher factor is made up of ten of the next lower, till he comes to feel that such tenfoldness is a natural characteristic of enumeration. ”

“ The origin of the quinary mode of counting has been discussed with some fulness in a preceding chapter, and upon that question but little more need be said. It is the first of the natural systems. When the savage has finished his count of the fingers of a single hand, he has reached this natural number base. ”

“ We lose time in our count each year, so we throw in or stop counting until the time comes around to start again. The Klamath Indians are good in counting and can count up into the thousands. We count ten, and ten hundreds for one thousand. All of our counting is done by whole numbers ”

“ The count is a speculator, who will certainly ruin himself in experiments. He supposes there is in the neighborhood of the house he has bought a mineral spring equal to those at Bagnères, Luchon, and Canterets. ”

“ Teach the child to count 50 as soon as he has started in his number work at school and later on to 100. Objects should be counted at first and then counters substituted, such as pennies, marbles, blocks, beads, etc. ”

“ Anything of this kind can be easily used. Give him only a [Pg 63] glance, do not allow time enough for an actual count. In each case let the time allowed for each exercise be less than required to count the objects. ”

“ Sometimes people will speak of mere counting as one of the simplest operations in the world; but on occasions, as I shall show, it is far from easy. Sometimes the labour can be diminished by the use of little artifices; sometimes it is practically impossible to make the required enumeration without having a very clear head indeed. An ordinary child, buying twelve postage stamps, will almost instinctively say, when he sees there are four along one side and three along the other, "Four times three are twelve;" while his tiny brother will count them all in rows, "1, 2, 3, 4," etc. ”

“ The endeavours of the individuals engaged count cumulatively, to such effect that doubling their forces will more than double the aggregate efficiency; and conversely, reducing the number will reduce the effectiveness of their work by something more than the simple numerical proportion. ”

“ As a rule, however, the system has been none of these, but counting has been done by fives, by tens, or twenties, and this simply because it has been based upon the antique but persistent habit which man has of counting upon his fingers. ”

“ "Shall we make an appointment for a particular day and hour?" inquired the count; ”

“ "Without reflecting that this is the only moment in which you can study characters," said the count; "on the steps of the scaffold death tears off the mask that has been worn through life, and the real visage is disclosed. ”

“ The process of counting is nothing but a setting up of a one-to-one correspondence between the objects to be counted and certain words, 'one,' 'two,' 'three,' etc., in the mind. Many savage peoples have discovered no better method of counting than by setting up a one-to-one correspondence between the objects to be counted and their fingers. ”

“ cried the count, extending his clenched hands toward the crowd, "how well do I recognize you there, and that at all times you are worthy of yourselves!" ”

“ The word majesty was now dropped; but, with the deepest respect and humility, I was addressed as the count. What could I do? I accepted the title, and from that moment I was known as Count Peter. ”

“ In illustration and as an example it may be noticed that the eyes of the majority of persons convey the consciousness of numbers precisely, up to a certain point, without any operation of counting. Most people can say at a glance, of any small group of objects, that there are two, three, four, or even seven. With almost all individuals, counting, and counting from the beginning, becomes necessary when there are eight or more objects together. ”

“ We do not count a man’s years, until he has nothing [286] else to count. ”

“ If a larger number than twenty is to be counted, as when, for example, a chief has to pay in tax for each door of his house, he calls in the aid of several men, who sit before him. One of these tells off his fingers and toes as the chief utters the names of the heads of the rooms; and when twenty have been counted in this way, a second man begins on his fingers, while the first continues to hold on to all his toes. A third and a fourth man may be used in the same way to complete the count ”

“ The purpose of counting is extremely manifold. Its most frequent and most important application lies in the fact that the amount affords a measure for the effectiveness or the value of the corresponding group, both increasing and decreasing simultaneously. ”

“ Promise me that when next you are angry you will count one hundred before you move or speak.” ”

“ Indeed, it is only by experience that we can know that any definite process of counting will give the true cardinal number of some class of entities. It is perfectly possible to imagine a universe in which any act of counting by a being in it annihilated some members of the class counted during the time and only during the time of its continuance. ”