Around 1900 B.C., a student in the Sumerian city of Nippur, in what’s now Iraq, copied a multiplication table onto a clay tablet. Some 4,000 years later, that schoolwork survives, as do the student’s ...
Archaeologists working in northern Mesopotamia say they have uncovered visual patterns that look a lot like structured counting, even though no written numerals existed at the time. The claim is bold: ...
If you claim you’ve never wondered why math exists, you’re either lying or have not been truly bored yet. Gracie Cunningham, a teenager who took to TikTok to muse about how early mathematicians came ...
In 1886 the mathematician Leopold Kronecker famously said, “God Himself made the whole numbers — everything else is the work of men.” Indeed, mathematicians have introduced new sets of numbers besides ...
BYU mathematics professor Doug Corey and a team of students created a YouTube channel devoted to applying theoretical math concepts to real-world problems. Imagine this: the BYU Cougars men’s ...
It’s a complaint many algebra teachers are familiar with, as more letters and symbols are introduced with progressively harder courses in mathematics. But why did the plus symbol emerge as the ...