We sometimes solve number problems almost without realizing it.For example, suppose you are conducting a meeting and you want to ensure that everyone there has a copy of the agenda. You can deal with this by labelling each copy of the handout in turn with the initials of each of those present. As long as you do not run out of copies before completing this process, you will know that you have a sufficient number to go around. You have then solved this problem without resorting to arithmetic and without explicit counting. There are numbers at work for us here all the same and they allow precise comparison of one collection with another, even though the members that make up the collections could have entirely different characters, as is the case here, where one set is a collection of people, while the other consists of pieces of paper.