Is there an infinity of infinities? The question sounds almost absurd, like a child’s riddle meant to twist your brain into ...

A team of four prominent mathematicians, including two Fields medalists, proved a conjecture described as a “holy grail of additive combinatorics.” Within a month, a loose collaboration verified it ...

A child’s ability to understand and manipulate sets of numbers in 1st grade predicts how well he or she will succeed in the math required both in secondary school and for day-to-day living, according ...

Consider this sequence of numbers: 5, 7, 9. Can you spot the pattern? Here’s another with the same pattern: 15, 19, 23. One more: 232, 235, 238. “Three equally spaced things,” says Raghu Meka, a ...

The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. In late 2017, Ashwin Sah and Mehtaab Sawhney met as undergraduates at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Since then, the pair ...

It was hailed as a revolutionary mathematics curriculum that prioritized the concept of a set over the concept of a number. 'New math' was introduced to millions of US schoolchildren in the 1960s. Yet ...

Professor of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Maryland, Baltimore County Below is an edited excerpt from the book club discussion. You’re welcome to keep the conversation flowing by adding ...

Counting feels utterly effortless to adults, who are unlikely to even remember when or how they picked up this useful, apparently automatic skill. Yet when you think about it, counting is a remarkable ...