The question goes: "A bat and a ball cost $1.10 in total. The bat costs $1.00 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?" Is your knee-jerk response that the ball costs 10 cents? That is a ...

You can probably think of a time when you’ve used math to solve an everyday problem, such as calculating a tip at a restaurant or determining the square footage of a room. But what role does math play ...

At first glance, the problem seems ridiculously simple. And yet experts have been searching for a solution in vain for decades. According to mathematician Jeffrey Lagarias, number theorist Shizuo ...

Description: Take any positive integer. If it is even, divide it by 2. If it is odd, multiply it by 3 and add 1. This produces a new positive integer. Repeat this process, producing a sequence of ...

Imagine you’re cruising down the highway and notice that you are running low on fuel. Your GPS shows 10 gas stations ahead on your route. Naturally, you want the cheapest option. You pass the first ...

Alan Veliz-Cuba has received funding from the Simons Foundation and the American Mathematical Society for some of his research. You can probably think of a time when you’ve used math to solve an ...