This is what happens when you mess with infinity. You might think that if you simply started adding the natural numbers, 1 plus 2 plus 3 and so on all the way to infinity, you would get a pretty big ...

Weird Math sets out to “reveal the strange connections between math and everyday life.” The book fulfills that laudable goal, in part. At times, teenage math prodigy Agnijo Banerjee and his tutor, ...

Numbers rarely make headlines, but pi has a habit of doing exactly that. The famous constant, which is best known from school math as 3.14—never actually ends, and its digits never repeat their ...

It’s a complaint many algebra teachers are familiar with, as more letters and symbols are introduced with progressively harder courses in mathematics. But why did the plus symbol emerge as the ...

Mr. Wilkinson is the author of “A Divine Language: Learning Algebra, Geometry, and Calculus at the Edge of Old Age.” See more of our coverage in your search results.Encuentra más de nuestra cobertura ...

Mathematical insights challenging understanding of numbers and infinity ...

IF YOU were forced to learn long division at school, you might have had cause to curse whoever invented arithmetic. A wearisome whirl of divisors and dividends, of bringing the next digit down and ...