You Say Math, I Say Maths

In last week's posting about The Princeton Companion to Mathematics, Mark Nelson referred to "that vanishingly small group: people who actually like math. (Or maths, as Jocelyn might say.)" But why do Americans say math while I say maths? I tried looking this up, but didn't find anything useful. Not even in the Oxford English Dictionary. Though one posting did inform me that math is singular because "they can only work on one problem at a time". Probably, its author was not American. Nevertheless, I have a soft spot for the question, because of a mistake I once made in Athens. So I'll tell you about that instead.



June 14, 2009
URL:http://www.drdobbs.com/architecture-and-design/you-say-math-i-say-maths/228700439

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