In “The Great Math War,” Jason Socrates Bardi takes on a battle for the soul of numbers that divided the experts of its day.

Americans think schools need to teach math skills to prepare students for future success—but they don’t always agree on which skills are the most crucial, and the subject stirs up complicated emotions ...

A key part—though surely not the only part—of early-grades math is ensuring students get the basic arithmetic functions down and, beyond that, making sure they’re able to swiftly and automatically ...

This is episode two of a three-part series. You can listen to part one here and part three here. [CLIP: Theme music] Rachel Feltman: Ever wondered what math actually is? No? Well, mathematicians sure ...