Tallying

The simplest way to record a count of something is to just make a mark for each thing counted.

|||   - This many licks to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop

As the count goes higher these tally marks start to take a lot of space and are hard to read.

||||||||||||||||||||||||  - Hours in a day

We also need a better way to record if there was nothing to count besides the absence of a tally mark.

0     - Zero ponies for you.  Not yours.