Learning to use an abacus qualifies as a Big Pointless Goal, something that Gloria Liu describes in her recent article in the Atlantic as “an aspiration that lacks grand purpose, yet requires ...

The abacus has been around since antiquity, and takes similar forms over the hundreds of cultures that have embraced it. It may be one of the first devices to be considered as having a “user interface ...

I recently read, with great interest, several articles on “Common Core” math. Another attempt to try and improve math skills in a country that does so poorly compared to other countries in the world.

For this series, we've been thinking a lot about some of the iconic objects that some of us remember using — if only for a short period of time — in our early schooling. Slide rules, the recorder, ...