When my students grow too dependent on their calculators, I ask them to find a number that, when multiplied by itself, gives them 2. Students quickly see that since 1² = 1 and 2² = 4, the answer has ...
Irrational numbers are numbers that cannot be expressed as the ratio of two whole numbers. This is opposed to rational numbers, like 2, 7, one-fifth and -13/9, which can be, and are, expressed as the ...
Originally defined as the ratio between the circumference of a circle and its diameter, pi — written as the Greek letter π — ...
In the early 1970s mathematician Donald Knuth spent a sabbatical with his wife in Norway. The time was meant to be spent relaxing. Yet one night he woke up his partner in a state of agitation. He ...
Helping students to develop math fluency takes more than just flash cards. It requires teaching them how to think about ...
Imagine a horizontal line. The very left is marked one thousand and the very right is marked one billion. On this line, where would you add a marker to represent one million? If you said somewhere in ...