Comparing two school funds, Meera says the ₹45,23,000 fund is bigger because the digit '5' appears…

Why

Meera's conclusion is right — ₹45,23,000 genuinely is the bigger fund. But 'the digit 5 appears earlier' isn't the actual reason, it's a coincidence of these two particular numbers. Compare them properly, place by place from the left: both start 4-5, matching exactly through the lakhs place — so those don't decide anything. The real decision happens at the thousands place, where 45,23,000 has a 3 and 45,19,999 has a 1 — that is the first place where they genuinely differ, and it's what makes 45,23,000 bigger. If she'd compared 45,23,000 with 41,99,999 instead, her rule would have failed completely, since 4-1 in the lakhs place already settles it before any '5' or '3' is even reached. Test: compare 52,00,000 and 45,99,999 using her rule — a '5' does appear 'earlier' in the second number's tens-of-thousands place, yet 52,00,000 is clearly the bigger number because the very first digit, 5 versus 4, already decides it. It is bigger, but the reason is wrong: comparing large numbers means checking place by place from the left and stopping at the first place that differs, not hunting for a big-looking digit anywhere in the number.