Mathworld, hosted and sponsored by Wolfram Research, Inc., offers a large collection of online mathematics resources intended for students, educators, math enthusiasts, and researchers. (See also November 30, 1999 Scout Report for Science & Engineering ) In light of the impact of the recent tsunami in Asia, the January 2005 News section discusses the mathematics of tsunamis. Noting that the...

The concepts of median and mean are key to understanding statistics, and this rather novel applet from the Mathematical Association of America (MAA) Mathematical Sciences Digital Library is quite a find. The applet was created by Kady Schneiter of Utah State University and it consists of two windows. In the first, the user fills in a grid to create a distribution of numbers and to investigate the...

For mathematics teachers and students, Meta-Calculator is a free, online graphing, matrix, scientific, and statistics calculator. All four calculators are easy to use with either a cursor or a computer keyboard. The user-friendly design of all four calculators makes them a bit easier to use than traditional calculators, as they allow users to quickly toggle between different tools with just a...

Mike's Math Club, sponsored by the Milken Family Foundation, is "a curriculum enrichment program that shows elementary school students that math can be useful and entertaining." Visitors to the website are introduced to the Math Club Team through short personal descriptions and photos. The team of full-time teacher-mentors visit children in public schools in California and communicate via mail...

Can social media make a math problem go viral? Ask Presh Talwalkar, a Stanford-educated mathematician, economist, and author who runs the popular Mind Your Decisions channel on YouTube. The channel teaches viewers how to solve tricky math problems and tackle delightfully maddening logic puzzles, riddles, and brain teasers. Popular videos on the channel address math challenges posed to Amazon...

Massachusetts Institute of Technology's (MIT) Signals, Information and Algorithms Laboratory focuses on "developing efficient algorithmic structures to address emerging problems of fundamental interest involving the manipulation of signals and information in diverse settings." Its work examines fundamental limits and architectural principles, implementation issues and experimental investigations....

In October 1957, the Soviet Union successfully launched Sputnik, the first artificial satellite to successfully orbit the earth. With its distinctive "beep", it was a very real manifestation of the Soviet Union's growing influence in the realms of science and technology. In the United States, it spurred educators and others to create new and compelling ways to get young people interested and...

The "beep-beep" of Sputnik in 1957 signaled to the world that the Space Race was on. The United States realized that the Soviet Union was making significant headway in the world of technology and discovery, and something needed to be done. Over the next several decades, the United States continued to grow concerned about the state of science and math education in the country. Fortunately, teams of...

Supported by grants from the Gabriella and Paul Rosenbaum and William Randolph Hearst Foundations, the Mathematics Science Research Institute (MSRI) offers a Journalist-in-Residence Program in an effort to make mathematics accessible to the layman. Responding to complaints that mathematics is "too abstract; too remote from 'real life' to be of interest to the general public," the program...

Located at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, The Office for Mathematics, Science, and Technology Education is primarily interested in creating resources for educators working on these topics. First-time visitors should definitely start by looking through the "Resources" area, as they will find classroom tested exercises that cover basic topics in algebra, trigonometry, and a number...