Abstract Algebra: Preliminaries

Natural numbers

The natural numbers are those numbers used for counting (as in "there are six coins on the table") and ordering (as in "this is the third largest city in the country"). In common mathematical terminology, words colloquially used for counting are "cardinal numbers", and words used for ordering are "ordinal numbers". The natural numbers can, at times, appear as a convenient set of codes (labels or "names"), that is, as what linguists call nominal numbers, forgoing many or all of the properties of being a number in a mathematical sense.

Some definitions begin the natural numbers with 0, corresponding to the non-negative integers {0, 1, 2, 3, ...}, whereas others start with 1, corresponding to the positive integers {1, 2, 3, ...}. Texts that exclude zero from the natural numbers sometimes refer to the natural numbers together with zero as the whole numbers, while in other writings, that term is used instead for the integers (including negative integers).

The natural numbers are a basis from which many other number sets may be built by extension: the integers, by including (if not yet in) the neutral element 0 and an additive inverse (−n) for each nonzero natural number n; the rational numbers, by including a multiplicative inverse (${\tfrac {1}{n}}$) for each nonzero integer n (and also the product of these inverses by integers); the real numbers by including with the rationals the limits of (converging) Cauchy sequences of rationals; the complex numbers, by including with the real numbers the unresolved square root of minus one (and also the sums and products thereof); and so on. This chain of extensions make the natural numbers canonically embedded (identified) in the other number systems.

In common language, particularly in primary school education, natural numbers may be called counting numbers to intuitively exclude the negative integers and zero, and also to contrast the discreteness of counting to the continuity of measurement — a hallmark characteristic of real numbers.

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