Why Place Value Matters

In our base-10 system, a digit's position tells you its power of ten. That is why 305 is not the same as 350, even though both use the same three digits. From right to left: ones, tens, hundreds, thousands, and so on. ### Example In 4,872, the 8 is in the tens place, so it repres

Published June 8, 2026

In our base-10 system, a digit's position tells you its power of ten. That is why 305 is not the same as 350, even though both use the same three digits.

Reading columns

From right to left: ones, tens, hundreds, thousands, and so on.

Example

In 4,872, the 8 is in the tens place, so it represents 80 — not 8.

Zeros

Zero marks an empty column: 4,072 has no hundreds digit, so we write 0 as a placeholder.

Place value after the decimal

Tenths, hundredths, and thousandths extend the same idea to the right of the decimal point. Moving one place left multiplies by 10; moving one place right divides by 10.