From classrooms to kitchen tables, debates about math education are never far away. Should teachers drill multiplication facts or encourage creative strategies to solve problems? The answer, ...

Working memory is like a mental chalkboard we use to store temporary information while executing other tasks. Scientists worked with more than 200 elementary students to test their working memory, ...

People often solve simple arithmetic problems, such as basic addition, subtraction, multiplication or division, in their minds. The precise mental processes they rely on to solve these problems, ...

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 ...

Some readers may solve the problem procedurally: line up the two numbers, add the ones column, carry the one, and add the tens to get 43. Others might instead notice a creative shortcut: 29 + 14 is ...

Large language models (LLMs) have significantly advanced natural language understanding and demonstrated strong problem-solving abilities. Despite these successes, most LLMs still struggle with ...