Los Angeles Times

Math 106, Math 003: same class, different colleges. Why a common number system is elusive

At Pasadena City College, college algebra for STEM majors is labeled Math 003. At Cypress College, it’s Math 141-C and at Napa Valley, it’s Math 106. For anyone hoping to enroll in the same course at ...
Scientific American

The Man of Numbers: Fibonacci's Arithmetic Revolution [Excerpt]

Before the 13th century Europeans used Roman numerals to do arithmetic. Leonardo of Pisa, better known today as Fibonacci, is largely responsible for the adoption of the Hindu–Arabic numeral system in ...
The Conversation

Nothing matters: how the invention of zero helped create modern mathematics

A small dot on an old piece of birch bark marks one of the biggest events in the history of mathematics. The bark is actually part of an ancient Indian mathematical document known as the Bakhshali ...
Scientific American

This Number System Beats Binary, But Most Computers Can’t Use It

The Babylonians used separate combinations of two symbols to represent every single number from 1 to 59. That sounds pretty confusing, doesn’t it? Our decimal system seems simple by comparison, with ...