A new proof about prime numbers illuminates the subtle relationship between addition and multiplication — and raises hopes for progress on the famous abc conjecture. One morning last November, the ...

Four thousand years ago, the Babylonians invented multiplication. Last month, mathematicians perfected it. On March 18, two researchers described the fastest method ever discovered for multiplying two ...

For thousands of years, philosophers have pondered cardinality: knowing “how many.” Using a series of crude estimates, the ancient Greek mathematician Archimedes worked out the approximate number of ...

We humans are a smart bunch, but we really suck when it comes to understanding and handling excessively large numbers. Here’s why we’re so bad at it — and what you can do to make sense of concepts and ...

More than 150 years ago, the economist and philosopher William Stanley Jevons discovered something curious about the number 4. While musing about how the mind conceives of numbers, he tossed a handful ...