The earliest tools used by human beings to count are fingers and toes, but they can only represent numbers within 20. When the number was large, primitive people mostly counted pebbles and beans. Gradually, people were not satisfied with counting by grains, so they invented the method of knotting to describe counting, and described counting on hides, bones, trees and stones.

In ancient China, counting was done with sticks made of wood, bamboo or bones, which was called counting chip. These counting methods and symbols gradually became the earliest digital symbols (numbers). Today, all countries in the world use Arabic numerals as standard numbers.

As follows:

Mathematics (hanyu pinyin: shùXué；; ; Greek: μ α θ η μ α κ; English: Mathematics comes from the ancient Greek word μ θ η μ α (má th?ma), which means learning, learning and science. Ancient Greek scholars regarded it as the starting point of philosophy and the "foundation of learning".

In addition, there is a narrow and technical meaning-"mathematical research". Even in its etymology, its adjective meaning related to learning will be used to refer to mathematics.

Mathematics is a universal means for human beings to strictly describe and deduce the abstract structure and mode of things, and can be applied to any problem in the real world. All mathematical objects are artificially defined in essence. In this sense, mathematics belongs to formal science, not natural science. Different mathematicians and philosophers have a series of views on the exact scope and definition of mathematics.

Aristotle defined mathematics as "quantitative mathematics", which lasted until18th century. /kloc-since the 0/9th century, mathematical research has become more and more rigorous, and it has begun to involve abstract topics such as group theory and projection geometry that have no clear relationship with quantity and measurement. Mathematicians and philosophers have begun to put forward various new definitions.

Some of these definitions emphasize the deductive nature of a lot of mathematics, some emphasize its abstraction, and some emphasize some themes in mathematics. Even among professionals, the definition of mathematics has not been reached. Whether mathematics is an art or a science has not even been decided.