Math historians (if you thought regular math people were boring, you should get a load of these guys) generally agree that the earliest humans on the planet had a very simple number system that went like this: one, two, a lot. There was no need for more numbers. Lucky you – that’s not true any [...]
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Getting cozy with numbers
February 7th, 2010 
Algebra Tutor Most people new to algebra view it as a disgusting, creeping disease whose sole purpose is to ruin everything they’ve ever known about math. They understand multiplication, and can even divide numbers containing decimals (as long as they can check their answers with a calculator or a nerdy friend), but algebra is an entirely different [...]
Postulates for the natural numbers
January 31st, 2010 Algebra Tutor Every natural number a has a successor a + 1. (For example, the successor of 5 if 6, the successor of 10 is 11, and so on.) Every natural number a (except 1) has a predecessor a – 1. (The predecessor of 4 is 3, the predecessor of 9 is 8, and so on.) The [...]