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 ...

Use left and right arrow keys to seek audio. 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 ...

This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American February is Black History Month in the United ...

Tucked away in a seemingly forgotten corner of the Istanbul Archaeology Museum, Daniel Mansfield found what may solve one of ancient math’s biggest questions. First exhumed in 1894 from what is now ...

A shard of smooth bone etched with irregular marks dating back 20,000 years puzzled archaeologists until they noticed something unique – the etchings, lines like tally marks, may have represented ...

How is math education different now from, say, in President Abraham Lincoln’s day? A new online exhibition sheds light on math’s long history. The exhibition is a collaboration between the National ...

Open up a classic mathematics textbook written by a Welshman, Robert Recorde, and flip past the preface and the table of contents. There, you'll see the bold statement that math is "contemptible and ...