New article posted on LiveScience.com today!

What Is Algebra?

http://www.livescience.com/50258-algebra.html

I've been wanting to write about the history of Algebra since I first started with LS. In my first draft I made the mistake of trying to get an explanation out of the way so I could talk about the history. I have to thank my editor for his insistence that it didn't connect, and that we really had to pander to the average Googleing passerby. I kind of gave up on the topic, but to my surprise, after some time away, my editor expressed interest in picking it back up.

Somehow I'd forgotten how effective the technique of using a topic's history to explain it is. (See my articles on the transistor or quantum mechanics). I'm really happy with how this came out.