Answer: Yes, I would.
Second from last and second from the end of the red squares are both the same.
Now I know there is an exceptional case to all of this, but I'm not going to go there yet because I'm trying to let tsuwm see how everyday people think of phrases, such as:
third from last
third from the end
third from the bottom
...as eqivalent expressions of ordinal positions.
I ran a very interesting test yesterday. My kids are listening to "Peter and the Wolf" this week. Part of their preparation is reviewing the woodwind family we have been taking a look at the entire first grading period of school as the ten-minute orchestral part of their lesson I include for all grade levels, kindergarten through fifth grade.
On the back wall of the music room, I have a sort of parade of the nine, large instrument cards we covered (woodwinds) with the name of each printed out and displayed with each instrument.
Before listening to the wolf and Peter, I show the children the instruments that will be key players in the story. At the far left end I've also added a card with strings to represent Peter and a card for timpani to show the rifles of the hunters.
OK. Everything's labeled and in a row. No numbers. Just names.
Yesterday, as an experiment generated by my curiosity here and also as a way to check whether my second graders (roughly seven years old) could respond quickly with the basic facts after hearing the work, I asked a series of questions by referring my children to the display of labeled instrument cards. I asked:
"The third from last instrument (i.e., card) was represented by which character?"
Kids piped out: "The grandfather!"
"The last instrument (i.e., card) was represented by which character?"
Kids piped out: "The duck!"
*Cross my heart, I never referred to the cards before by ordinal terms. I'd pointed to the pictures directly beforehand and said whatever points I'd wanted to make about the instrument.
What I'm getting at here is this group of young children had no problem whatsoever in translating what I meant by "third from last" "fifth from last" (clarinet) and similar terms. They responded very quickly since I was asking for group response (which we all know is a lemming response in children, but still the group responded correctly every time). And the rapidity of their answers is enlightening because they were having to (very quickly):
1. Find the correct picture I'd identified only by phrases such as "fourth from last instrument";
2. And make the connection between the picture and name they saw there and identify the correct character from the work.
I would suggest here that even if a child had never before heard "fourth from last," he would have been able to translate the meaning because of having possibly applied "fourth from the bottom" or "fourth from the end."
A tangent: What has been most surprising to me in this week of Peter's wolf is only a few children have ever heard it or even seen it in the numerous video/cartoon renditions of it. When I ask them, before plunging into the preparation, only two or three hands will go up in each class. The only exception this week was a fourth grade class in which seven out of about twenty-five hands went up.
