Every mathematician has a story that goes something like this. You’re at a party, and someone asks what you do for a living. “I’m a mathematician,” you say. “You must be a genius!” they reply. Or ...

The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. David Bessis was drawn to mathematics for the same reason that many people are driven away: He didn’t understand how it worked. Unlike ...

In “How Not to Be Wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking,” Jordan Ellenberg writes about when it’s a good idea to buy lottery tickets, why tall parents have shorter children, a dead fish in an MRI ...

Math offers us lots of problem-solving techniques that help us distill the essence of questions. Many of us will be familiar with reading a math problem, and needing to figure out what's being asked, ...

Math, as author and University of Wisconsin professor Jordan Ellenberg writes, may not be the most readily accessible subject in school. When faced with a complex equation a student may ask, “When am ...