Last week, my first grader came home with thoughts about math (I love it when she does that!) She said that, since one hundred plus ten was “one hundred and ten”, that, therefore, infinity plus ten ...

When Ed Scheinerman's 7-year-old granddaughter asked the question that every mathematician secretly loves—"What is the number before infinity?"—he knew he was onto something. "You're not going to like ...

This is what happens when you mess with infinity. You might think that if you simply started adding the natural numbers, 1 plus 2 plus 3 and so on all the way to infinity, you would get a pretty big ...

INFINITY is a concept that is easy to think about, but hard to understand. Who hasn’t looked up at the night sky and wondered whether space goes on forever? Is it an endless expanse, or does it ...

When mathematician Georg Cantor first glimpsed the true nature of infinity, it changed mathematics forever. He demonstrated that infinity isn’t just endless; it exists in different sizes, each opening ...

As a mathematics education researcher, I study how math instruction impacts students' learning, from following standard math procedures to understanding mathematical concepts. Focusing on the latter, ...

NOVA: How do mathematicians define infinity? Netz: Something which is equal to some of its parts. That's really the technical definition. NOVA: Is there a difference between the mathematical concept ...