A year after he started his Ph.D. in mathematics at McGill University, Matt Bowen had a problem. “I took my qualifying exams and did absolutely horribly on them,” he said. Bowen was sure that his ...

Consider this sequence of numbers: 5, 7, 9. Can you spot the pattern? Here’s another with the same pattern: 15, 19, 23. One more: 232, 235, 238. “Three equally spaced things,” says Raghu Meka, a ...

An example of a linear sequence. A list of numbers or diagrams that are in a particular order is called a sequence close sequenceA sequence is a set of numbers that follow a certain rule. For example, ...

In my previous column I looked at the role of investigations and the recognition of patterns in helping children to learn mathematics in general and their multiplication tables in particular. I made ...

Here’s a quick arithmetic lesson that can be answered by, say, a second grader: What’s the difference between P80 million and P22 million? Answer by a normal second grader: P58 million. Answer by ...