Methods similar to this go back thousands of years, at least to the ancient Sumerians and Egyptians. But is this really the best way to multiply two big numbers together? Around 1956, the famous ...

This summer, battle lines were drawn over a simple math problem: 8 ÷ 2(2 + 2) = ? If you divide 8 by 2 first, you get 16, but if you multiply 2 by (2 + 2) first, you get 1. So, which answer is right?

Knowing your multiplication facts is very useful, but what happens when the numbers you are multiplying are greater than those in your multiplication tables? You will need to calculate using a column ...