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Ordering decimals 1

Sal orders 5 decimals from least to greatest. Created by Sal Khan.

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Video transcript

We're asked to order the following numbers from least to greatest, and I encourage you to pause this video and try to think of it on your own. Order these numbers from least to greatest. Well, let's work through it together now. So, none of these numbers have any places, any value to the left of the decimal point. They have no ones here. 0 ones, 0 ones, 0 ones, 0 ones, 0 ones. So let me then go to the next decimal place to the right. So I'm starting with the largest decimal places, and then I'm going to successively smaller decimal places. So I'll go to the tenths place. So this one right over here has 0 tenths. This has 0 tenths. This has 0 tenths. This one has 0 tenths. This one has 7 tenths, so this one actually has tenths. This has seven of them, so I'm going to leave this one here as the greatest. We're ordering from least to greatest. Now let's move to the hundredths place. So this one, this one, this one, this one all have 0 tenths. Let's look at the hundredths place. This has 7 hundredths. This has 7 hundredths. This one has 7 hundredths. This has no hundredths as well. This has 0 hundredths, so this one has neither tenths nor hundredths. So this one is going to be the smallest. This one has no tenths, no hundredths. This one actually has tenths. All of these-- these three in the middle-- have no tenths, but they have some hundredths, and they all have the same number of hundredths. 7 hundredths, 7 hundredths, 7 hundredths. So now let's look at the thousandths place. This one has 9 thousandths. This one has 0 thousandths. And this one has 0 thousandths as well. So out of these three, this one is the largest, because this one actually had some thousandths out of these three. Now let's go look at-- we have to pick between these two. Both of these have no tenths. Both of them have exactly 7 hundredths. Both of them have no thousandths, but this one has 9 ten thousandths while this one has no ten thousandths. So this one is less than that one. And now I'm done. I think I have ordered the numbers from least to greatest. And the key here is go to the place value that's most significant-- I guess you could say-- that has the most value. So that was the ones place. Compare them on that. Then go to successively smaller place values. Keep going to the right, and keep comparing them, and then you'll be able to order them.