The word “algorithm” can sometimes seem like a word designed to scare people away from math classes, much like the words “calculus”, “Fourier transform”, or “engineering exam”. But in reality it’s ...

A key part—though surely not the only part—of early-grades math is ensuring students get the basic arithmetic functions down and, beyond that, making sure they’re able to swiftly and automatically ...

Everyone agreed on the first step: Solve inside the parentheses, for 2+2=4. But after that, people split down two paths. Some multiplied first, while others divided, leading to different answers—1 and ...

Once Sanaa Hiremath, 11, was home schooled, she found she could do math without writing problems down. She has a Guinness World Record, finishing a 12-digit multiplication problem in under 10 minutes.

Young students around the world struggle to memorize multiplication tables, but the effort pays off. Cognitive scientists say that learning 6 x 7 and 8 x 9 by heart frees up the brain’s working memory ...

Sanaa Hiremath is like many 11-year-olds. She loves being outside or watching videos on her iPad, but here’s where she’s different: She can solve any math problem without using a calculator, pen, or ...

This summer, battle lines were drawn over a simple math problem: 8 ÷ 2(2 + 2) = ? If you divide 8 by 2 first, you get 16, but if you multiply 2 by (2 + 2) first, you get 1. So, which answer is right?

Clarissa A. Thompson receives funding from the U.S. Department of Education (Institute of Education Sciences). Marta Mielicki receives funding from the U.S. Department of Education (Institute of ...