There are two kinds of numbers; ordinal and cardinal. Ordinal numbers denote rank or position in a system, while cardinal numbers tally how many units of something there are. You can think of ordinals ...

A number that states how many of something. In "record 43 has 7 fields," the 7 is the cardinal number. Contrast with "ordinal number," which identifies a sequence such as "record 43." See cardinality.