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 ...

A set of the six sides of a die matches up one-to-one with a set of red shoes, helping illustrate Georg Cantor's set theorem. Image courtesy of GBH/NOVA It can be easy to take math for granted. But ...

For four decades, a quiet boundary in pure mathematics kept a powerful theorem locked inside the safe world of finite quantities. Now a new result known as Sebestyen’s theorem has pushed that boundary ...

A new kind of infinity appears to break the rules of how extremely large numbers behave, and could redraw the way the mathematical universe is ordered. It may come as a surprise, but mathematicians ...

Of all the endless questions children and mathematicians have asked about infinity, one of the biggest has to do with its size. Whether it’s on the playground or at bedtime, children encounter the ...