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 ...

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 ...

A tablet that dates back some 3700 years has been found to be the oldest example of applied geometry in the history of mathematics. Australian mathematician Dr. Daniel Mansfield from UNSW Science'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 ...

Maxine Calle is a 2023 AAAS Mass Media Fellow at The Conversation U.S. and she receives funding from the National Science Foundation. David Bressoud does not work for, consult, own shares in or ...

As a young math student, Rachel Eng memorized formulas and theorems, but she never learned about the mathematicians who developed them. Nor did she hear about the controversies and dramas that ...

The hallways of math and science history are overflowing with the achievements of white men, from Sir Isaac Newton to Steve Jobs; their faces are printed into elementary school textbooks everywhere, ...

The observance was formally instituted by the Government of India in December 2011, and December 22 was designated as ...

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 ...

A while ago, I got interested in mathematics, mostly because I had done so poorly at it in school. I’m being coy. I didn’t do poorly; I pretty much failed. I only passed by cheating. Anyway, I bought ...