Is the smallest number 1 or 0? To answer this question, we must start with "numbers" and "digits". The number of digits refers to the number of digits occupied by an integer. Call a one-digit number a one-digit number and a two-digit number a one-digit number ... For example, 48076 is a five-digit number, because it occupies five digits, and "0" here occupies one digit.

Can 0 be called a single digit? I can't. Because there is a rule in the notation: the highest digit of a number cannot be 0. Why is it so stipulated? Because without this rule, 0 is a number, then it can be concluded that the smallest two digits are 00 and the smallest three digits are 000, which is obviously wrong. Not only that, if there is no such regulation, it is impossible to determine how many digits a number is. For example, 15 is a two-digit number, "0 15" becomes a three-digit number, and "00 15" becomes a four-digit number. In this way, we can call the same number several numbers at will, and the concept of "number" is unnecessary. Therefore, the most significant bit of a number cannot be "0". In other words, the smallest number is 1, not 0.

As for the numbers encountered in daily life and production work, such as 004785,043, etc. They are used to express specific meanings under certain conditions. For example, the telephone number 00748 16 indicates that the local telephone capacity is less than10 million, and the largest number consists of seven digits, but it cannot be said that 00748 16 is seven digits.

Second edition 2:

The following is teacher Ding's reply on April 9th, 2003:

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At present, most foreign mathematicians stipulate that 0 is a natural number. In order to facilitate international communication, the national standards of People's Republic of China (PRC) (GB 3 100~3 102-93) and 1993 are both the quantities and units (1 1-2.9). Therefore, in the revision of mathematics textbooks for primary and secondary schools in recent years, our textbook researchers have revised them according to the above national standards. That is, there is no object, which is represented by 0. 0 is also a natural number.

However, in the "divisible" part of primary school, the natural number 0 has not been considered, so it is not included in the concepts of divisor and multiple. In addition, in general, we don't say that the number 0 is a few digits, so the minimum number of digits is 1.