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 ...

The origins of the decimal point, something millions of people use daily, may be much older than we first thought. It was initially considered to have originated in 1593, having been used by German ...

The narrow paths between the book-crammed shelves at the Department of the History of Mathematics in Wilbour Hall might induce claustrophobia. And the stacks of yellowing, oversized photocopies are ...

Around 1900 B.C., a student in the Sumerian city of Nippur, in what’s now Iraq, copied a multiplication table onto a clay tablet. Some 4,000 years later, that schoolwork survives, as do the student’s ...

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 ...

The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics releases “Currisulum and Evaluation Standards for School Mathematics.” The document emphasizes that students should understand the concepts underlying ...

In 2014 Mura Yakerson, a college student at the time, decided to practice driving in a quiet area in the countryside near Saint Petersburg, Russia. Then something went wrong. While she was pulling out ...

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 ...