"All Cretans are liars", said Epimenides, a Cretan. But this means that his statement must be a lie too. But then it is false that Cretans are liars and the statement must be true. So what now?

At a middle school in California, the state testing in math was underway via the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC) exam. A girl pointed to the problem on the computer screen and asked ...

What is pure mathematics? What do pure mathematicians do? Why is pure mathematics important? These are questions I’m often confronted with when people discover I do pure mathematics. I always manage ...

When I tell someone I am a mathematician, one of the most curious common reactions is: “I really liked math class because everything was either right or wrong. There is no ambiguity or doubt.” I ...

This article is from Proof Positive, our friendly math newsletter that's delivered to your inbox every Tuesday afternoon. Sign up today and read it first. Last week I explained how a then 25-year-old ...

In mathematics, some theorems seem self‑evident yet remain unproven. Explore the story of the “obviously true” statement that has baffled experts for decades. 'No idea what you have unleashed': ...

Children of math-anxious parents learned less math over the school year and were more likely to be math-anxious themselves—but only when these parents provided frequent help on the child’s math ...