Algebra represents some peoples’ fondest memories of high school—and for others, it goes down in personal history as the one activity that tuned them out on math forever But algebra offers instant help with an issue nearly everyone needs to think about—personal finances

The word "rational" has all kinds of connotations - good and bad - in today's culture Be rational, we say to people who seem unable to see reason

Every day, we make decisions based on what we think may, or most likely will, happen Many of these decisions seem to be based more on wishful thinking than on logic - sure, you'll run off that extra banana split

Circles are odd things We encounter them all the time in nature - in fact we couldn't exist without them, the earth and all its heavenly neighbors (including the sun) being spherical - and yet mathematicians and geometers insist that there are no perfect circles, outside the realm of theory

It's a question every math teacher hears Most dread it

Among publishers, advertisers, and other business folk, the idea that Americans hate numbers is almost proverbial One publishing-industry dictum holds that each equation an author puts in a book's manuscript will cut that book's sales in half

If you've taken a first-year college history course - or read through a basic history textbook - you may have noticed a small gap It's only a thousand years or so

One of the most fascinating things about history is the amount of it that's been wiped out - on purpose For example, in the ninth century CE, the greatest library in the world, the Library of Alexandria, was burned in an act of war, and ever since, history buffs have kept themselves tantalized and amused by trying to guess the identity of some of those books we'll never see

More adults than ever before are returning to formal education Some want to learn what they have failed to learn in high school

For those of us who are old enough to remember classrooms with walls, the methods we used to learn math were teacher-centered and method-based Those who came of age before cooperative learning became prevalent in schools probably remember learning one method of solving problems and some of us may have felt the sting when we could not understand or even use that method at all

A question that vexes math students and teachers alike - "How does this apply to the rest of my life" - turns out to have some surprising answers

Don't worry about your difficulties with math, Albert Einstein is said to have told a schoolgirl who wrote to him to lament her lack of success in the subject - "Mine," he wrote, "are still greater" Like many of Einstein's off-the-cuff remarks, this one contains a profound truth