Math Concepts

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

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

By Jesslyn Shields

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

By Thomas Harlander

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

If you're already familiar with subtracting fractions, learning how to add fractions will be a piece of cake for you. And if you haven't learned how to subtract fractions yet, don't worry - we've got you covered!

By Jesslyn Shields

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

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

By Jesslyn Shields & Austin Henderson

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

By Jesslyn Shields & Yara Simón

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

By Jesslyn Shields

A world without math is unimaginable. It's a part of who we are. It's the analytical juice of our left brain. In the words of physicist Richard Feynman, even a fool can use it. So why do so many of us turn our backs on numbers?

By Robert Lamb

You use the number zero all the time, but it may surprise you to learn that it sometimes isn't a number at all. It may surprise you even more to learn that it was all but invented. See what else surprises you about zero in this article.

By Josh Clark

For many of us, a number is just a number, a bit of information that tells you, say, what time it is. But mathematicians look at that same number and divine relationships that underlie nature itself. Ready to enter the trippy world of number theory?

By Robert Lamb

You've heard of Google, but what about a Googol? If not, then this tutorial is for you.

By Mark Mancini

Mathematician Andrew Booker has found the three cubes that add up to the number 33, a long-unsolved math problem.

By Patrick J. Kiger

Two mathematicians have solved a decades-old math problem by harnessing the power of a virtual supercomputer.

By Patrick J. Kiger

And it'll take XIV minutes flat.

By Alia Hoyt & Desiree Bowie

How do you calculate absurdly high numbers without writing them out in numerals? You use scientific notation. We'll give you examples and show you how.

By Mark Mancini & Yara Simón

You may remember from math class that a prime number is a number that can only be divided by 1 and itself. But why are they important anyway?

By Patrick J. Kiger

Rational numbers can be expressed as the ratio of two integers, while irrational numbers, such as square roots of non-square numbers, cannot.

By Patrick J. Kiger & Austin Henderson

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

By Jesslyn Shields