The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. Calculus is a powerful mathematical tool. But for hundreds of years after its invention in the 17th century, it stood on a shaky ...

All routes to STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) degrees run through calculus classes. Each year, hundreds of thousands of college students take introductory calculus. But only a ...

Hoping to make myself smarter and then write a book about it, I began studying mathematics when I was sixty-five, which was five years ago. As a boy, I had been kicked off the math train at the ...

In the late 19th century, Karl Weierstrass invented a fractal-like function that was decried as nothing less than a “deplorable evil.” In time, it would transform the foundations of mathematics.

Experts are questioning the relevance of pushing all college-bound students to take calculus, arguing that the “narrow pathway toward calculus … fails to serve most students.” Credit: Erika Rich for ...

After writing a groundbreaking math textbook, Maria Agnesi quit math for good Evelyn Lamb The witch of Agnesi, you may be disappointed to know, is a curve that math students generally learn about in ...