Parents and teachers know that reading to their children in preschool and kindergarten is important. But how can parents and teachers support young children’s mathematics knowledge? One often ...

The debate over what early math should look like and what should be included in the Common Core State Standards for early mathematics has been contentious, to say the least. This story also appeared ...

John Conway’s Game of Life, a famous cellular automaton, has been found to have periodic patterns of every possible length. In 1969, the British mathematician John Conway devised a beguilingly simple ...

Remember the graph paper you used at school, the kind that’s covered with tiny squares? It’s the perfect illustration of what mathematicians call a “periodic tiling of space”, with shapes covering an ...

All complex correlated systems, from Arctic melt ponds to the Internet, appear to be governed by the same math as a random matrix. In 1999, while sitting at a bus stop in Cuernavaca, Mexico, a Czech ...

During family dinner, we have a tradition. Everyone has to summarize their day by describing three good events and, if necessary, one bad event. When my turn arrived at a recent dinner, I turned to my ...

Mathematical patterns reveal profound truths about the universe and, surprisingly, about our inner lives as well. These five visual math concepts offer unique frameworks for understanding our behavior ...

In 1999, while sitting at a bus stop in Cuernavaca, Mexico, a Czech physicist named Petr Šeba noticed young men handing slips of paper to the bus drivers in exchange for cash. It wasn’t organized ...