Math Concepts

There are two different scales of measuring temperature on Earth, but they merge at just one very cold number.

By Jesslyn Shields

It's seeped into movies and popular culture, but what does "six degrees of separation" really mean? Are we really that connected to each other?

By Dave Roos

Math is a language of symbols and equations and knowing the basic signposts is the first step in solving mathematical problems.

By Thomas Harlander

A new geometric shape called the "einstein" shape has been discovered and when you tile it, no repeating pattern emerges.

By Jesslyn Shields

Dividing fractions is easy once you learn a couple of rules and remember three words — keep, change and flip.

By Jesslyn Shields

Whether the circle is as big as planet Mars or as small as a tennis ball, the ratio of its circumference divided by its diameter will always equal pi (3.14). But why?

By Marshall Brain & Dave Roos

Mary, Queen of Scots was in the news again when amateur cryptologists found the key to decoding some letters that had remained a mystery for 500 years. How did they manage to break the code?

By Dave Roos

The Collatz conjecture can be worked on by 9-year-old math whizzes, but it's flummoxed some of the greatest minds of the past century. Will it ever be solved?

By Jesslyn Shields

We take the mystery out of reporting the percent error correctly and show you how to use it in real life.

By Mark Mancini

Want to know the area of your pizza or the kitchen you're eating it in? Come on, and we'll show you how to figure it out with an area formula.

By Thomas Harlander

The very idea of trying to subtract one fraction from another may send you into convulsions of fear, but don't worry — we'll show you how.

By Jesslyn Shields

You can find the distance between two points by using the distance formula. It's an application of the Pythagorean theorem. Remember that from high school algebra?

By Mark Mancini

When a peta and a tera won't do, you can now call on the quetta or the ronna prefixes. But just how big are these new metric systems of measurement?

By Alia Hoyt

How large does a random group of people have to be for a 50 percent chance to exist that at least two of the people will share a birthday?

By Laurie L. Dove

With a little patience, you can master this trick of converting binary code to decimals — and have fun doing it!

By Mark Mancini

Both degrees and radians represent the measure of an angle in geometry. So, how do you convert one to the other?

By Mark Mancini

Most of the world uses meters, apart from the U.S. and a few other countries. So what's an easy way to convert from meters to feet and vice versa?

By Mark Mancini

Finding the range of a set of numbers is an easy subtraction problem!

By Jesslyn Shields

There was a time (4,000 years ago) when simply being able to add might get your name on a clay tablet or help you accumulate vast wealth.

By Dave Roos

Converting kilogram measurements into pounds is not hard. We'll show you the textbook way plus two quick-and-dirty shortcuts.

By Mark Mancini

Many people get speed and velocity confused. It's no surprise because the terms are often used interchangeably. But they're not quite the same thing. So how do you find the velocity of an object?

By Mark Mancini

We'll show you both a quick and dirty way, and a precise, more complicated formula for converting a Celsius temperature to Fahrenheit (and vice versa).

By Sydney Murphy

Scientists have come up with a new formula to describe the shape of every egg in the world, which will have applications in fields from art and technology to architecture and agriculture.

By Jesslyn Shields

Real numbers are the opposite of imaginary numbers and include every number you can think of.

By Jesslyn Shields

A perfect square is a number, but it can also be explained using an actual square.

By Jesslyn Shields