David E. Dunning explores how mathematical notation is a social, world-building technology. It’s natural to think of math as being fundamentally abstract. Whether it’s invented or discovered, its ...

In March 2025, mathematician Daniel Litt made a bet. Despite the march of progress of artificial intelligence in many fields, he believed his subject was safe, wagering with a colleague that there was ...

Index fund withdrawals with 65% embedded gains lose nearly 10% to capital gains taxes. Roth conversion ladders require five years before penalty-free access. Early retirees need bridge funding from ...

Computers are extremely good with numbers, but they haven’t gotten many human mathematicians fired. Until recently, they could barely hold their own in high school-level math competitions. But now ...

While gender differences in learning math have long been debated, new research debunks an old myth about the math abilities of boys and girls. Women have surpassed men in college enrollment and degree ...

The 2023 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) shows that corruption is thriving across the world. The CPI ranks 180 countries and territories around the globe by their perceived levels of public sector ...

War in Europe is a staple topic in the study of history, but there’s one major conflict most history books won’t teach you: the battle of the equal sign, =. These two parallel lines were, in fact, the ...

Prime numbers—numbers divisible only by 1 and themselves—have long fascinated mathematicians. This year a researcher discovered the largest known prime number, with a whopping 41,024,320 digits. It ...

On October 16 1843, the Irish mathematician William Rowan Hamilton had an epiphany during a walk alongside Dublin’s Royal Canal. He was so excited he took out his penknife and carved his discovery ...

Reference notation, also known as reference initials, refers to a small but important section of the business letter template, as described by Colorado State University. The notation is placed at the ...