Grade school math students are likely familiar with teachers admonishing them not to just guess the answer to a problem. But a new proof establishes that, in fact, the right kind of guessing is ...

"Even the +, −, =, and x signs we take for granted only came into widespread use in the 17th century. Which means that the earlier algebraists we know of … all had expressed their equations mostly in ...

\(\mathbf{ax^2 + bx + c = 0}\) where \(a\), \(b\) and \(c\) are numbers. Both \(b\) and/or \(c\) can be equal to zero. In this section, solving equations where \(a >1 ...