There’s really no such number as “point three seven five.” Yet that’s how a lot of students say .375, and a big reason for this is that’s how a lot of teachers say it--including me until I realized ...

Back when I was in fifth or sixth grade and learning decimals, I was questioning why they were important. Fractions were useful. But decimals were just a useless alternative to fractions, I thought.

Historians have discovered what may be the world's first decimal point, in an ancient manuscript written 150 years before its next known appearance. There have been many ways to split integers, but ...

NPR's Scott Simon talks to math historian Glen Van Brummelen about his finding that the decimal point appeared in the 1440s, earlier than thought. How did the decimal point come to be? - the dot that ...

Math historian Glen Van Brummelen came across decimal points in Giovanni Bianchini's manuscript, Tabulae primi mobilis B. Van Brummelen / Historia Mathematica, 2024 For years, historians thought ...