What is the last number?

Is there a last number? Ever thought about that? If there even is, how is it provable that it is the last number?

The question was presented to me by a little, and curious, 5 year old. We have many questions these days. This one was not an easy one to answer. So I went to Google, to seek what I already had a hunch about.

How would anyone know that numbers had come to an end? How could it be compared? With what knowledge was the answer found? What would it mean that there was no longer anything to count?

If the preceding questions are the natural course of discovery, then it might seem as though this is an unanswerable question.

What is the Last Number

However, I needed to convey it in easy to understand terms. There was a request for the very last number. Furthermore, if one existed, it still remained a mystery. It’s important to answer questions as truthfully as possible. When possible.

In the course of discovery, the word infinite kept popping up. This was not a surprise, but was also not the name of a number. The question was specific in more ways than one, they usually are from 5 year olds. Similarly, every number had a name on Sesame Street.

The last one, should be no exception. Time to dig a little deeper into Google. After searching the last countable number, the general consensus was down to one point. The sequence of natural numbers never ends, and is infinite.

Hunch confirmed. Now to explain that to a curious, and genuinely interested, 5 year old. When it came down to it, there was some good intel in all the infinity talk. It boils down to, just too many!

the last one?

There’s still so many numbers that they haven’t been able to name them all yet. They are still working on it! Maybe one day the last number will show up for a name, but that’s a long time away!

In the meantime we have other questions that need answering. Who names the numbers anyway? And why? Also, what does Google do? It’s not a game? Why? …..