Barbie caught a lot of flack back in the ’90s for declaring, “Math class is tough!” Today we find ourselves in the disorienting position of defending her. We recently got a note from an anonymous ...

The old way to multiply required a student to add the products of 36 x 4 and 36 x 2. The trick is to add that 0 at the end of the second product. Your fifth-grader asks you for help with the day's ...

For many parents with young children, the bedtime routine is a firmly entrenched system involving a warm bath, a good book, a kiss and a hug. Toying with that equation borders on sacrilege, but Laura ...

A key part—though surely not the only part—of early-grades math is ensuring students get the basic arithmetic functions down and, beyond that, making sure they’re able to swiftly and automatically ...

When I was a kid learning arithmetic the only visual aid I remember is flash cards. These were useful for memorizing single-digit addition and multiplication, but is memorization really the best ...

At the beginning of the 20th century, the German mathematician David Hilbert (1862–1943) advocated an ambitious program to formulate a system of axioms and rules of inference that would encompass all ...

In 1929, the superintendent of schools in Ithaca, New York, sent out a challenge to his colleagues in other cities. "What," he asked, "can we drop from the elementary school curriculum?" He complained ...