Understanding Addition and Subtraction of Large Multi-Digit Numbers
What You'll Learn: How to add and subtract really BIG numbers - numbers in the thousands, millions, and even billions! These are the kinds of numbers you see in real life, like populations of countries, distances in space, or money in national budgets.
Why Do We Need to Work with Large Numbers?
Large numbers are everywhere in the real world:
- Population: The United States has over 330,000,000 people!
- Space: The Moon is about 384,400,000 meters from Earth
- Money: A city budget might be $45,000,000
- Technology: A computer can do 2,500,000,000 calculations per second
Understanding Place Value with Large Numbers
Before we add or subtract, let's review our place values. Each position in a number has a special value: