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 ...

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The History of Mathematics Research Group studies the origins and development of mathematical ideas and methods from the beginnings of recorded history—in all societies and cultures. Research in this ...

athematics is, at its core, an art. Like painters, musicians or writers, mathematicians create and explore new worlds. They ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

There will never be another day like today — at least not until 2016. Today's date (Feb. 29) pops up on the calendar only on leap years, once almost every four years. It has taken millennia for our ...