Numeracy or numerosity, the ability to think about and use numbers, varies among human cultures and within populations, much like intelligence does. Many known languages, for example, have no words ...

In the early 1970s mathematician Donald Knuth spent a sabbatical with his wife in Norway. The time was meant to be spent relaxing. Yet one night he woke up his partner in a state of agitation. He ...

A basic feature of number theory, prime numbers are also a fundamental building block of computer science, from hashtables to cryptography. Everyone knows that a prime number is one that cannot be ...

“Many people don't realize that there are math questions that we don't know how to answer,” says mathematician Melanie Matchett Wood of Harvard University and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced ...