Imagine that your focused mind is like your right hand, and your unfocused mind is like your left. You'll get more done by using both. And it lightens cognitive load. Using only focused effort is like ...

A game of chess requires its players to think several moves ahead, a skill that computer programs have mastered over the years. Back in 1996, an IBM supercomputer famously beat the then world chess ...

One of my first vivid memories of math is of timed tests. I still remember how visceral my panic felt–sweaty palms, heart pounding–as I scrambled to recall facts before the clock ran out. You might ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. Linda Darling-Hammond is an expert on education research and policy. This blog was updated on June 24, 2026 to clarify a statistic ...

When checking that solutions to certain problems are correct, it turns out, you can’t get around the inherent complexity of ...

ChatGPT's breakthrough is not what it seems.

Mathematics, like many other scientific endeavors, is increasingly using artificial intelligence. Of course, math is the backbone of AI, but mathematicians are also turning to these tools for tasks ...

The employment future looks bright for people with strong math skills. But among the nation’s K-12 students, that represents a small and dwindling demographic. What’s to blame for students’ poor math ...

In October 2024 I attended a workshop at Harvard University where mathematicians talked through the uses of artificial intelligence in their field. Most were less worried about the future of math than ...

Among high school students and adults, girls and women are much more likely to use traditional, step-by-step algorithms to solve basic math problems – such as lining up numbers to add, starting with ...