For all of the recent strides we’ve made in the math world—like a supercomputer finally solving the Sum of Three Cubes problem that puzzled mathematicians for 65 years—we’re forever crunching ...

Here’s a simple-sounding problem: Imagine a circular fence that encloses one acre of grass. If you tie a goat to the inside of the fence, how long a rope do you need to allow the animal access to ...

Little progress had been made in solving Ramsey problems since the 1930s. Now, researchers have found the answer to r(4,t), a longstanding Ramsey problem that has perplexed the math world for decades.

Hunt for shapes and make familiar objects by putting together several different shapes. Warm up with a Mystery Math Mistake to tell whether Dotson's 10-frames represent a number more than his focus ...

Construct a convex octagon with four right angles. It probably says a lot about me as a teacher that I assign problems like this. I watch as students try to arrange the right angles consecutively.

When you think back on elementary school math, do you have fond memories of the countless worksheets you completed on adding fractions or solving division problems? Probably not. Researchers and ...

In 2019, mathematicians finally solved one of the hardest math problems—one that had stumped them for decades. It’s called a Diophantine Equation, and it’s sometimes known as the “summing of three ...

This story originally appeared in the February 2025 issue of Texas Monthly as part of our public-education feature, “What Our Schools Actually Need.” Humans have been learning math for thousands of ...