The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. David Bessis was drawn to mathematics for the same reason that many people are driven away: He didn’t understand how it worked. Unlike ...

Images of plants painted on pottery made up to 8,000 years ago may be the earliest example of humans’ mathematical thought, a ...

David Bessis was drawn to mathematics for the same reason that many people are driven away: He didn’t understand how it worked. Unlike other creative processes, like making music, which can be heard, ...

Humans are born to do math, and they have the brain infrastructure to prove it—including a cluster of specialized nerve cells for processing numbers. Despite this dedicated cluster, mathematical ...

It’s natural to think that mathematics is primarily about numbers. In school, we first learn how to recite numbers and then spend considerable time writing them down and manipulating them on paper. Of ...

Math education is rapidly changing. And while there are real headwinds with respect to math achievement, the new ideas and curricula that are emerging have the potential to power real progress for ...

Math, as author and University of Wisconsin professor Jordan Ellenberg writes, may not be the most readily accessible subject in school. When faced with a complex equation a student may ask, “When am ...

Helena Osana receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Concordia University provides funding as a founding partner of The Conversation CA. Universitié ...