Cardinal and Ordinal Numbers with Examples and FAQs

What do you mean by Cardinal and Ordinal numbers?

Cardinal Numbers

Rita has 4 friends.

Ravi loves 2 subjects.

Anju bought 12 chocolates.

The numbers 4, 2, 12 here represent the quantity of something.

Cardinal Numbers are the numbers that answer the question: “How Many?”. Cardinal numbers talk about the quantity or count of an object.

Ordinal Numbers

Siya stood 4^{\text{th}} in a singing competition.

Rohan lives on the 3^{\text{rd}} floor.

Riya is the 2^{\text{nd}} child of her parents

The numbers 4^{\text{th}},3^{\text{rd}}\text{ and }2^{\text{nd}} here represent the position or rank of someone or something.

Ordinal Numbers are the numbers that tell the position of an object or someone.

Chart of First 30 Cardinal and Ordinal Numbers

Examples

Example 1: Identify the ordinal and cardinal numbers.

Solution:

The ordinal numbers are 20^{\text{th}},1^{\text{st}}\text{ and }5^{\text{th}}.

The cardinal numbers are 11, 8 and 50.

Example 2: In the word ‘MULTIPLICATION’ how many alphabets are consonants and how many are vowels. Are these numbers cardinal?

Solution: In the word ‘MULTIPLICATION’ 

The vowels are U, I, I, A, I and O. Hence, the number of vowels is 6 which is a cardinal number.

The consonants are M, L, T, P, L, C, T and N. Hence, the number of consonants is 8 which is again a cardinal number.

Example 3: Anushka loves to play basketball. She has played a total of 5 tournaments. Her team came 1^{\text{st}} in the last tournament.

Mention the cardinal and ordinal numbers used above.

Solution:

The number of tournaments is 5, which is a cardinal number.

The position of Anushka’s team is 1^{\text{st}}, which is an ordinal number.