Efforts to use the tech to customize lessons to students' individual interest demonstrate its potential—and the shortcomings.

Everyone who has kids, or who remembers his/her childhood, will also remember the struggle to understand why math matters. "Who cares about multiplication tables and fractions, triangles and algebra?

Math as both profession and course of study can be a hard sell, something even Don Draper might have trouble pitching. The field unites numbers, theories, and ideas that, yes, can be physically ...