The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. Mathematics started with numbers—clear, concrete, intuitive. Over the last two centuries, however, it has become a far more abstract ...

If you haven’t thought much about numbers much since that college calculus class, you might not think about how they’re relevant to everyday life, aside from maintaining your bank account and doing ...

Math is one of those disciplines that has a long and colorful history. If you want to learn more about the great math minds of the past, you should download Minds of Modern Mathematics from IBM. The ...

In an attempt to attract more freshmen to theoretical mathematics, the math department expanded its offerings this school year. Last fall, it introduced the MATH 60 “Modern Mathematics: Discrete ...

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I’m a zero at mental arithmetic. It’s true—I struggle with this skill—but I want to focus on the phrase itself. In our language, we often equate zero with something negative. But zero is the only real ...

Centuries ago, a prestigious Islamic library brought Arabic numerals to the world. Though the library long since disappeared, its mathematical revolution changed our world. The House of Wisdom sounds ...

One of the few things that unites Americans across the political spectrum in this age of partisan polarization is disdain for modern math instruction. From the far left to the far right, you can find ...