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, ...

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.

A new Carnegie Mellon University neuroimaging study reveals the mental stages people go through as they are solving challenging math problems. Published in Psychological Science, researchers combined ...