The symbols we use every day have fascinating and surprisingly recent origins, explains author Joseph Mazur in his new book A few years ago friends and I were talking about the origins of written ...

A new book traces the history of division signs, square roots, pi, exponents, graph axes and other mathematical symbols. (Bigstock) Consider the simple plus sign: +. Most people, Joseph Mazur writes ...

Mathematics is often thought of as a subject that a student either understands or doesn't, with little in between. In reality, mathematics encompasses a wide variety of skills and concepts. Although ...