The symbols we use every day have fascinating and surprisingly recent origins, explains author Joseph Mazur in his new book A few years ago friends and I were talking about the origins of written ...

War in Europe is a staple topic in the study of history, but there’s one major conflict most history books won’t teach you: the battle of the equal sign, =. These two parallel lines were, in fact, the ...

Math uses its own language of symbols. Some you learned so young you forgot there was ever a time you didn’t know them. Others show up in advanced classes and make you wonder who decided a backwards 3 ...