You may never have heard of modular arithmetic, but you use it every day without the slightest difficulty. In this system, numbers wrap around when they reach a certain size called the modulus; it is ...

Students should be able to perform basic operations (addition, subtraction, multiplication, division) and have an understanding of basic Algebra. Students should also understand what the basic number ...

This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American My first musical love was Beethoven. The 2nd ...

One of my fellow contributors here recently wrote a post about leap years and why we have them. This reminded me of modular arithmetic and the formula for calculating the day of the week for any date ...

I'm sure FPGA logic designers have often heard it said: “We just need to take this number mod 3.” Or maybe something like, “Just round to the nearest hundred.” This latter case really means: “Take the ...

Recent progress on the “sum product” problem recalls a celebrated mathematical result that revealed the power of miniature number systems. It’s one thing to turn a cartwheel in an open field. It’s ...