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 ...

After German mathematician Gerd Faltings proved the Mordell conjecture in 1983, he was awarded the Fields Medal, often described as the “Nobel Prize of Mathematics.” The conjecture describes the set ...

Number sense is so ingrained that many adults don’t remember being taught such early math skills, much like learning how to read. But unlike the recent wave of evidence on science-based reading ...

Students in Melissa Williams' kindergarten class at the Westminster School in Atlanta, Georgia, practice connecting quantities to written numbers — a key part of number sense. Credit: Holly Korbey for ...

Two recent studies show that K-12 teachers’ nagging ignorance of fundamentals has contributed to historic declines in U.S. math performance. The National Council on Teacher Quality reported Tuesday ...

The California State Board of Education voted to adopt a new—and much-debated—math framework on Wednesday, concluding a years-long process that involved three drafts, prompted hundreds of suggested ...

The California State Board of Education’s new math framework, adopted last month, has drawn intense public criticism. Most critics have focused on the framework’s overt political content or its aims ...

Over 20 years ago, Bob Moses, a civil rights activist and educator, published “Radical Equations: Civil Rights from Mississippi to the Algebra Project.” In his book, Moses argued that teaching math ...

The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. All of modern mathematics is built on the foundation of set theory, the study of how to organize abstract collections of objects. But in ...