While American children once learned to add by reading a poster of animals and birds, they do it now by playing games on computers. Each step in between—whether it be a box of blocks or exercises ...

Would students take a stronger interest in math if they knew that an ancient African bone (from 20,000 B.C.) might be one of the world’s oldest known counting tools? Or that the work of Muslim ...

Like many of the cultures it studies, the Department of History of Mathematics has had innovative leaders, a golden era and, inevitably, a fall from glory. This year could witness the end of a ...

Archaeologists working in northern Mesopotamia say they have uncovered visual patterns that look a lot like structured counting, even though no written numerals existed at the time. The claim is bold: ...

Nobel laureate Eugene Wigner once wrote that mathematics has the uncanny ability to describe the universe around us. That’s the spirit behind the new book “The Big Bang of Numbers: How to Build the ...

March 14 — a day you’re more likely than most others to eat — or throw — a pie and get a reduced price on your pizza. It’s all in celebration of pi (Greek letter π), the mathematical constant and ...

Peter Schumer does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond ...

It’s a complaint many algebra teachers are familiar with, as more letters and symbols are introduced with progressively harder courses in mathematics. But why did the plus symbol emerge as the ...