Symplectic geometry is a relatively new field with implications for much of modern mathematics. Here’s what it’s all about. In the early 1800s, William Rowan Hamilton discovered a new kind of ...

Google DeepMind researchers recently developed a technique to improve math ability in AI language models like ChatGPT by using other AI models to improve prompting—the written instructions that tell ...

This jingle has helped generations of algebra students recall the quadratic formula that solves every equation of the form $latex ax^2+bx+c=0$. The formula is as ...

The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. In 2003, a German graduate student named Britta Späth encountered the McKay conjecture, one of the biggest open problems in the ...

Simple mathematical concepts such as counting appear to be firmly anchored in the natural process of thinking. Studies have shown that even very young children and animals possess such skills to a ...

But, both of these would require large structural changes for a course that teaches hundreds of students a year — something that can’t really happen in the near term. What could happen now, though, is ...

There is no special “math gene” that naturally makes some people better at math than others. Credit: Maddie Meyer/Getty Images The Hechinger Report covers one topic: education. Sign up for our ...