If a 6-month-old can distinguish between 20 dots and 10 dots, she’s more likely to be a good at math in preschool. That’s the conclusion of a new study, which finds that part of our proficiency at ...

A quick glance at two, unequal groups of paper clips (or other objects) leads most people to immediately intuit which group has more. In a new study, researchers report that practicing this kind of ...

A new study introduces choice engineering—a powerful new way to guide decisions using math instead of guesswork. By applying carefully designed mathematical models, researchers found they could ...

I have two children, one of whom is a son born on a Tuesday. What is the probability that I have two boys? Gary Foshee, a puzzle designer from Issaquah, Wash., posed this puzzle during his talk this ...

Signals and systems theory is a tough topic. Terms like convolution and impulse response can be hard to understand on a visceral level and most books that talk about these things emphasize math over ...

Research in mathematics is a deeply imaginative and intuitive process. This might come as a surprise for those who are still recovering from high-school algebra. What does the world look like at the ...

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 ...

A recent headline in the New York Post proclaimed “Regents math test is easier to pass-thanks to low standards.”1 The Regents Common Core exam is given to eighth graders to examine whether they are on ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — A quick glance at two, unequal groups of paper clips (or other objects) leads most people to immediately intuit which group has more. In a new study, researchers report that ...