International Maths Challenge

Math education outcomes in the United States have been unequal for decades. Learners in the top 10% socioeconomically tend to be about four grade levels ahead of learners in the bottom 10%—a statistic that has remained stubbornly persistent for 50 years. To advance equity, policymakers and educators often focus on boosting test scores and grades and making advanced courses more widely available. Through this lens, equity means all students earn similar grades and progress to similar levels of math. With more than three decades of experience as a researcher, math teacher and teacher educator, we advocate for expanding what equity means in mathematics education. We believe policymakers and educators should focus less on test scores and grades and more on developing students’ confidence and ability to use math to make smart personal and professional decisions. This is mathematical power—and true equity. What is ‘equity’ in math? To understand th...

  Bob Moses, who helped register Black residents to vote in Mississippi during the Civil Rights Movement, believed civil rights went beyond the ballot box. To Moses, who was a teacher as well as an activist, math literacy is a civil right: a requirement to earning a living wage in modern society. In 1982, he founded the Algebra Project to ensure that “students at the bottom get the math literacy they need.” As a researcher who studies ways to improve the math experiences of students, we believe a new approach that expands access to algebra may help more students get the math literacy Moses, who died in 2021, viewed as so important. It’s a goal districts have long been struggling to meet. Efforts to improve student achievement in algebra have been taking place for decades. Unfortunately, the math pipeline in the United States is fraught with persistent opportunity gaps. According to the Nation’s Report Card—a congressionally mandated project administered by the Department of Educati...

There’s a strange trend in mathematics education in England. Maths is the most popular subject at A-level since overtaking English in 2014. It’s taken by around 85,000 and 90,000 students a year. But many universities – particularly lower-tariff institutions, which accept students with lower A-level grades – are recruiting far fewer students for maths degrees. There’s been a 50% drop in numbers of maths students at the lowest tariff universities over the five years between 2017 and 2021. As a result, some universities are struggling to keep their mathematics departments open. The total number of students studying maths has remained largely static over the last decade. Prestigious Russell Group universities which require top A-level grades have increased their numbers of maths students. This trend in degree-level mathematics education is worrying. It restricts the accessibility of maths degrees, especially to students from poorer backgrounds who ar...

In times of crisis, effective humanitarian aid depends largely on the fast and efficient allocation of resources and personnel. Accurate data about the locations and movements of affected people in these situations is essential for this. Researchers from the University of Tokyo, working with the World Bank, have produced a framework to analyse and visualize population mobility data, which could help in such cases. The research is publishedin the journal  Scientific Reports . Wars, famines, outbreaks, natural disasters—there are unfortunately many reasons why populations might be forced or feel compelled to leave their homes in search of refuge elsewhere, and these cases continue to grow. The United Nations estimated in 2023 that there were more than 100 million forcibly displaced people in the world. More than 62 million of these individuals are considered internally displaced people (IDPs), those in particularly vulnerable situations due to being stuck within the borders of t...

  Three factors—the needs of the subject, the child, and the society—have influenced what mathematics is to be taught in schools. Many people think that “math is math” and never changes. This three-part series briefly discusses these three factors and paints a different picture: mathematics is an ever-changing subject. In the first part, we discuss- Needs of the Subject The nature of mathematics helps determine what is taught and when it is taught in elementary grades. For example, number work begins with whole numbers, then fractions and decimals. Length is studied before area. Such seemingly natural sequences are the result of long years of curricular evolution. This process has involved much analysis of what constitutes a progression from easy to difficult, based in part on what is deemed necessary at one level to develop ideas at later levels. Once a curriculum is in place for a long time, however, people tend to consider it the only proper sequence. Thus, omitting a topic or c...

  Is it possible to deduce the shape of a drum from the sounds it makes? This is the kind of question that Iosif Polterovich, a professor in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at Université de Montréal, likes to ask. Polterovich uses spectral geometry, a branch of mathematics, to understand physical phenomena involving wave propagation. Last summer, Polterovich and his international collaborators—Nikolay Filonov, Michael Levitin and David Sher—proved a special case of a famous conjecture in spectral geometry formulated in 1954 by the eminent Hungarian-American mathematician George Pólya. The conjecture bears on the estimation of the frequencies of a round drum or, in mathematical terms, the eigenvalues of a disk. Pólya himself confirmed his conjecture in 1961 for domains that tile a plane, such as triangles and rectangles. Until last year, the conjecture was known only for these cases. The disk, despite its apparent simplicity, remained elusive. “Imagine an infinite floor...

  Sudoku, the classic number puzzle, has captured the minds of puzzle enthusiasts around the globe. Originating from Japan, the name Sudoku translates to “single number,” reflecting the puzzle’s core principle: each number should appear only once in each row, column, and grid. This article will introduce you to the basics of Sudoku, walk you through some examples, and offer tips to enhance your solving skills. What is Sudoku? Sudoku is a logic-based puzzle game typically played on a 9×9 grid divided into nine 3×3 subgrids. The objective is to fill the grid with numbers from 1 to 9, ensuring that each row, each column, and each 3×3 subgrid contains all the numbers from 1 to 9 without repetition. Basic Rules of Sudoku: Each row must contain the numbers 1 to 9, without repetition. Each column must contain the numbers 1 to 9, without repetition. Each 3×3 subgrid must contain the numbers 1 to 9, without repetition. How to Solve a Sudoku Puzzle Step-by-Step Example Let’s walk through a s...