This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American Julia Robinson was born on December 8, 1919.

Math has long been a bane to American students. One way to counteract the difficulty is to discover the subject’s playful side. In this excerpt, a math professor reflects on recreational math and the ...

Ahead of Valentine’s Day, Robinson unveiled a new set of equations that translate romantic phrases and symbols into mathematics. To create them, he drew on disciplines ranging from trigonometry and ...

In recreational mathematics, the balance scale is an endless source of puzzles that require precise and elaborate logic and teach the fundamentals of generalization. Balance-scale puzzles abound in ...

Recreational math may sound like an oxymoron, but it is David Nacin’s guiding principle. Nacin is a former college deejay, yoga devotee and a 14-year mathematics professor at William Paterson ...

Math has long been a bane to American students. One way to counteract the difficulty is to discover the subject’s playful side. Manil Suri, a mathematics professor at the University of Maryland who is ...