What is the error in the SQL syntax that is causing the issue with ordering data numerically in PHP?

The error in the SQL syntax is that the ORDER BY clause is treating the numeric values as strings, resulting in incorrect ordering. To solve this issue, you can use the CAST function in SQL to explicitly convert the column values to a numeric data type before ordering them.

$sql = "SELECT * FROM table_name ORDER BY CAST(column_name AS UNSIGNED) ASC";
$result = mysqli_query($conn, $sql);

if (mysqli_num_rows($result) > 0) {
    while($row = mysqli_fetch_assoc($result)) {
        // Process each row
    }
} else {
    echo "0 results";
}