K-12 Overview All students will develop number sense and an ability to represent numbers in a variety of forms and use numbers in diverse situations. Descriptive Statement Number sense is defined as an intuitive feel for numbers and a common sense approach to using them. It is a comfort with what numbers represent, coming from investigating their characteristics and using them in diverse situations. It involves an understanding of how different types of numbers, such as fractions and decimals, are related to each other, and how they can best be used to describe a particular situation.
Number sense is an attribute of all successful users of mathematics.
Meaning and Importance Successful users of mathematics have good number sense. When someone chooses to use fractions in one situation and decimals in another because the respective operations are easier to perform or the results are easier to understand, that process is evidence of good number sense. When students continue work on a problem involving numbers until they recognize that their answers are reasonable in the context of the problem, they are using good number sense. When a student is comfortable with using an approximation to a number in certain situations, or understands that an approximation rather than an exact number might have been used, then that reflects good number sense. When students recognize that an answer is off by a factor of ten, or alternately that a decimal point has been misplaced, they are using good number sense.