Missing Figure

Either what woman having ten pieces of silver, if she lose one piece, doth not light a candle, and sweep the house, and seek diligently till she find it?

And when she hath found it, she calleth her friends and her neighbours together, saying, Rejoice with me; for I have found the piece which I had lost.

Luke 15:8-9

We've learned the basics of counting and when numbers are better spelled than written. But here is a strange problem and one that bears repeating. I know, I thought I said before that word problems were mostly just a waste of time. If you really stop and think about it though, they aren't much trouble at all. With that being said, let's try this one here. Can you help me think of the key frames of the figure? There's a woman but she's not important. I'm sure the result would have been the same had a man done it, don't you think? Then again there's ten pieces of silver. Ten pieces are what we're focusing on right at the moment and not the silver. That's a different topic altogether. Unless of course, you're a hunter of the supernatural or just like what it can buy. Okay, so she's missing a piece which makes her go looking.

The key portions of the problem worth solving are the numbers ten and one. She had ten and lost one. That's the easiest way to look at it. Ten minus creates another issue of the thing having a specific value attached. Apparently, the silver is worth something in her time. I'm not sure what siler is worth to you, probably not much, but in certain parts of the world it's more precious even than other forms of payment. Here the coin represents everything money can buy. With it she had nothing but a big empty house. Then without it, she had friends and neighbors in plenty as well as a party. Well, that's an awful strange sort of funny. Okay so ten without one makes it, can you guess? That's right, nine. There were nine coins left without any value attached. Should she find it again and add it back in? You already know it made ten.

Now let's say we assign the silver a value like say of ten. One piece of silver is valued at ten each. So, I have ten of them which makes one hundred. But then what if I have lost one of these ten-piece values. Then I'd have ninety. Finding one again makes it an even one hundred. We'll try that again a couple more times.