Tally marks

Uncommon card · No. 185812

Tally marks, also called hash marks, are used as a basic numeral system for counting; they can be thought of as a unary numeral system. They are most useful in counting (tallying) ongoing results, such as the score in a game or sport, as no intermediate results need to be erased or discarded. However, because of the length of large numbers, tallies are not commonly used for static text. Notched sticks, known as tally sticks, were also historically used for this purpose.

Read on Wikipedia · Image David Stewart, CC BY 2.0