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Street, town, county, state, country, continent — several true answers to where you live, each at a different size.
Paper packet. Every task here also exists on screen, where it is checked automatically; answers written on paper are not assessed by Nydus. When you are back at a device, enter your answers there.
You will put kinds of place in order of size, say what a place sits directly inside, and choose which answer to give to where do you live.
You can say where something is on a map by its square or by the direction it lies in. Both of those answer where on this map. This lesson answers a different question: which map, meaning how much of the world you have to draw before the place you mean is on it. You will also add and multiply.
| Term | What it means |
|---|---|
| Street | A road with houses or buildings along it. |
| Town | Many streets together; a big town is called a city. |
| County | A part of a state holding several towns and the land between. |
| State | A part of a country with its own government, holding many counties. |
| Country | A land with its own national government and laws. |
| Continent | One great piece of land holding many countries. |
Ask somebody where they live and there are several true answers, each at a different size: a street, in a town, in a county, in a state, in a country, on a continent.
They are not competing answers. Each one is completely inside the next, like boxes packed one in another. Mill Lane is in Barrow. Barrow is in Westmoor County. Westmoor is in the state of Lakeland, and Lakeland is in Ardland. So Mill Lane is in Ardland too, but the thing it sits directly inside is Barrow.
Which answer to give depends on who is asking. A neighbor wants the street. Somebody from another state wants the town. Somebody from another continent wants the country.
Another way: story
It is how you would describe where your classroom is. Not in the world: true, and useless. You would say which hallway, and then which floor if they still looked lost.
Another way: example
Read an envelope from the top down and the places get bigger every line: 12 Mill Lane, then Barrow, then Ardland. Read it from the bottom up and you are watching a letter find its way in.
Here is one invented address, packed box inside box.
| Size | Kind of place | Example |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | street | Mill Lane |
| 2 | town | Barrow |
| 3 | county | Westmoor |
| 4 | state | Lakeland |
| 5 | country | Ardland |
| 6 | continent | one of the seven |
Each row fits entirely inside the row below it. Nothing ever fits the other way, so the order never changes.
Every American address fits the same pattern. A family might live on Oak Street, in the city of Springfield, in Sangamon County, in the state of Illinois, in the United States, on the continent of North America.
The United States has fifty states. Almost all of them are split into counties; Louisiana calls its counties parishes and Alaska calls its big divisions boroughs, but they are the same size of box.
Which answer to where do you live? is best depends on who is asking. A new classmate from down the block wants the street. A cousin from another state wants the town. A pen pal in Japan wants the state or the country.
Giving too small an answer to a faraway person leaves them lost: they have never heard of Oak Street. Giving too big an answer to a neighbor is useless: they already know you live in the United States.
Nesting shows up in counting. Everyone who lives in a town also lives in its county, so the county's people are all its towns' people plus everyone living between the towns. And everyone in the county is counted again in the state.
If a county has two towns with four thousand and three thousand people, and two thousand more live in the countryside, the county has nine thousand people. Add the county to the rest of the state to count the state.
Sometimes every box holds the same number of smaller boxes. If a state has six counties and every county has four towns, the state has six groups of four towns: six times four, which is twenty-four towns.
Real counties are not all equal, so real counting usually means adding. But when the boxes are equal, multiplying is a quick way to count what is inside.
Each size of place needs its own map. A street map shows Mill Lane and its houses. A county map shows its towns but not every house. A map of the whole country shows the states and the biggest cities, and leaves the streets out completely.
So when you ask where is it?, part of the answer is on which map. A town too small for the country map can still fill a whole town map.
Checking an answer. Say it as a sentence: Mill Lane is in Barrow. If the sentence sounds backward, Barrow is in Mill Lane, the order is wrong.
Testing size by fitting is allowed because a place that holds another must be at least as big as everything inside it. Giving the next box out is the honest answer to what is it directly inside?, because every bigger box also holds the ones in between.
Adding the parts to count a bigger place is allowed because every person inside is in exactly one of the smaller parts, so nobody is left out or counted twice.
The most common slip is thinking a familiar name must be a big place. Another is skipping a box: saying a town is directly inside a state when there is a county in between.
A third is mixing up county and country, which sound alike but are very different sizes. A fourth is forgetting that the people of a town are counted again in its county and state.
Every letter mailed in the United States carries a nested address. It is written smallest first: the house number and street, then the city, then the state and a ZIP code, and for mail from abroad, the country.
The U.S. Postal Service reads it the other way around. A letter from another country first reaches a large international mail center. From there it goes to a processing center for the right part of the country, chosen by the first digits of the ZIP code. Then it goes to the post office for the town, and only there does a mail carrier sort it by street and house number.
The ZIP code itself is nested. Its first digit names a group of states, the next two digits a smaller area inside that group, and the last two digits a local post office's area. So a ZIP code is a list of boxes, each inside the last, written as five numbers, which lets machines sort millions of letters a day.
Every ten years the U.S. Census Bureau counts everyone in the country, and it reports the counts at every size of place. The same person is counted in their neighborhood, their town, their county, their state and the whole nation.
The counts nest exactly. A county's population is the sum of the people in all its towns plus everyone living outside the towns. A state's population is the sum of all its counties. Add up all fifty states and the District of Columbia and you get the population of the United States, about 331 million in 2020.
These nested counts decide real things. The number of people in each state decides how many members it sends to the U.S. House of Representatives. County and town counts help decide where new schools and roads are built. None of it works unless every person is placed in the right box at every size.
The commonest slip is deciding a place is big because the name is familiar. Your own town is the name you know best, so it feels like the biggest thing there is. It is not: how well you know a name is a fact about you.
The test is always the same, and it has nothing to do with fame: which one fits inside the other? The one that contains the other is the bigger one.
The second slip is skipping a size. Asked what Mill Lane is in, it is tempting to say Ardland, because that is the biggest name in the sentence. True, but the thing it is directly in is Barrow: one box out, not all of them at once.
Mill Lane is a street. Find the next box out.
$\text{Barrow, a town}$
A street sits in a town.
Find the box outside Barrow.
$\text{Westmoor, a county}$
A town sits in a county.
Keep going outward.
$\text{Lakeland, then Ardland}$
State, then country.
Say what Mill Lane is directly inside.
$\text{Barrow}$
The next box out, not the biggest.
Somebody has heard of Barrow and not of Westmoor. Name the kind of fact that is.
$\text{a fact about them}$
Not about the ground.
Choose the real test.
$\text{which fits inside which?}$
Fitting, not fame.
Apply the fitting test.
$\text{Barrow fits in Westmoor}$
A town inside its county.
Name the bigger place.
$\text{Westmoor}$
It holds Barrow and more.
State the rule.
$\text{fame is not size}$
Always test by fitting.
Barrow has $4$ thousand people and Millbrook $3$ thousand. Add the towns.
$4 + 3 = 7$
Thousands of people.
The rest of Westmoor has $2$ thousand. Add the county.
$7 + 2 = 9$
Everyone inside the county.
The rest of Lakeland has $11$ thousand. Add the state.
$9 + 11 = 20$
The county sits inside the state.
Check the sizes.
$4 < 9 < 20$
Town, county, state.
Say where Barrow's people are counted.
$\text{three times}$
Town, county and state.
Say why that is not double counting.
$\text{each count is a different box}$
Each total is for one place.
Choose the test.
$\text{which fits inside which?}$
Not which is famous.
Apply the fitting test.
$\text{the village fits in the county}$
The county holds it.
Name the bigger place.
Put these kinds of place in order, starting with the smallest.
Number the steps in order (write the number in the box):
Complete the worked solution: in the invented county of Westmoor, the town of Barrow has $4$ thousand people, the town of Millbrook has $3$ thousand, and the rest of the county has $2$ thousand. The rest of the state of Lakeland, outside Westmoor, has $11$ thousand. How many people live in Westmoor, and how many in Lakeland?
Add up the county.
$\text{Barrow} + \text{Millbrook} + \text{the rest} =$ k
Thousands of people inside Westmoor.
Add up the state.
$\text{Westmoor} + \text{the rest of the state} =$ s
The county sits inside the state.
Say where Barrow's people are counted.
$\text{in the town, county and state}$
Every box they sit inside.
Check the sizes.
$\text{town} < \text{county} < \text{state}$
A bigger box holds more.
These names are all from one made-up address. What kind of place is each one?
| a county | a country | a continent | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Westmoor | |||
| Ardland | |||
| one of the seven |
Barrow is a town in the county of Westmoor. Somebody says 'Barrow must be bigger than Westmoor, because I have heard of Barrow and I have never heard of Westmoor.' What is wrong with that?
An envelope is addressed to 12 Mill Lane, Barrow, Ardland. What kind of place does each line name?
| a street | a town | a country | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mill Lane | |||
| Barrow | |||
| Ardland |
Mill Lane is a street in the town of Barrow. Barrow is in the county of Westmoor, Westmoor is in the state of Lakeland, and Lakeland is in the country of Ardland. Say what each of these sits directly inside.
| It sits inside | |
|---|---|
| Mill Lane, a street | |
| Barrow, a town | |
| Westmoor, a county | |
| Lakeland, a state |
An invented state is split into $8$ counties, and every county holds $4$ towns. How many towns are in the state?
Answer:
A letter is mailed from another continent. The mail sorting centers handle it one line of the address at a time, always dealing with the **biggest** place first and working inward. Put their five steps in order.
Number the steps in order (write the number in the box):
Lesson test: one question per skill, one attempt each, no hints. Your answers are checked when you submit.
An invented state is split into $5$ counties, and every county holds $4$ towns. How many towns are in the state?
Answer:
You can say which places sit inside which. Tell somebody the test for deciding which of two places is the bigger one, and why having heard of a name is not it.
20. Your turn: a village sits in a county. Which of the two is bigger?, step 3
$\text{the county}$
The one that contains the other.