Long before Disney turned Beauty and the Beast and The Little Mermaid into global blockbusters, European writers, editors, and folklorists captivated readers with their fairy-tale collections as early ...

You’d be surprised how many young people can’t read this. One of its conclusions tells the sad tale. “Between 2020 and 2025, the number of students whose math skills fall below high school level has ...

UC San Diego is trying to solve a math problem. The university said a growing number of students are starting their freshman year lacking high school math proficiency. KPBS reporter Jacob Aere says ...

Every life is a universe all its own.

At the 2024 International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO), one competitor did so well that it would have been awarded the Silver Prize, except for one thing: it was an AI system. This was the first time ...

A University of California San Diego report warns that roughly one in eight incoming college students can’t meet middle school math standards. It found that the number of students needing to take ...

The New York State Education Department is pushing new math guidelines, including a recommendation that teachers stop giving timed quizzes — because it stresses students out. The new guidelines also ...

A dad in Texas turned to social media for help after becoming increasingly confused by a third-grade math problem set for his child as homework. Marty posted a screenshot of the problem to Reddit ...

You’re reading Book Currents, a weekly column in which notable figures share what they’re reading. Sign up for the Goings On newsletter to receive their selections, and other cultural recommendations, ...

Illustration by The Atlantic. Source: Mert Alas and Marcus Piggot. The album sometimes does fit that description—especially on the relatively strong, if unexpectedly downcast, opening three songs.

24-year-old founder and CEO Carina Hong created Axiom Math in March 2025 and has recruited a team of ten employees, most of whom are from Meta, to build a math-focused AI model. Last fall, Carina Hong ...

In the third century BCE, Apollonius of Perga asked how many circles one could draw that would touch three given circles at exactly one point each. It would take 1,800 years to prove the answer: eight ...