Place value up to hundred-thousands
Each digit in a number sits in a place, and each place has its own value. Read the digits from left to right and you can name any number.
The places we use
| Hundred-thousands | Ten-thousands | Thousands | Hundreds | Tens | Ones |
| 2 | 8 | 5 | 4 | 7 | 2 |
The number above is 285 472.
The digit 8 in this number is not just "eight" — it sits in the ten-thousands place and means 80 000.
Naming the places
Six words to remember:
- ones — the rightmost digit (loose marbles),
- tens — second from the right (10 marbles in a bag),
- hundreds — third (100 marbles on a shelf),
- thousands — fourth (1 000 in a cabinet),
- ten-thousands — fifth (10 000 in a room),
- hundred-thousands — sixth (100 000 on a floor).
For 5 906 we read "five thousand nine hundred and six": the 5 is in thousands, the 9 in hundreds, the 0 in tens (none), the 6 in ones.
Expanded form
You can rewrite any number as the sum of its place values:
285 472 = 200 000 + 80 000 + 5 000 + 400 + 70 + 2
Think of each part as a different kind of container: 2 full floors, 8 full rooms, 5 full cabinets, 4 full shelves, 7 bags and 2 loose marbles.
More examples:
- 30 058 = 30 000 + 50 + 8 (no hundreds; no thousands either, just ten-thousands)
- 902 000 = 900 000 + 2 000 (no hundreds, tens or ones)
- 6 007 = 6 000 + 7 (only thousands and ones)
Watch out for these
⚠️ A zero in the middle is important. Without it the whole number shrinks by a place:
- 40 070 (forty thousand and seventy) ≠ 4 070 (four thousand and seventy).
⚠️ The same digit means a different amount in different places:
- in 4 000 it means 4 000,
- in 400 it means 400,
- in 40 it means 40,
- in 4 it means 4.