Students often struggle to connect math with the real world. Word problems—a combination of words, numbers, and mathematical operations—can be a perfect vehicle to take abstract numbers off the page.

Clarification: This story has been updated to clarify how University of Colorado researchers handle their data collection. A student digs into a math problem that references his favorite superhero, ...

(THE CONVERSATION) Among high school students and adults, girls and women are much more likely to use traditional, step-by-step algorithms to solve basic math problems – such as lining up numbers to ...