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If you're not great at doing math in your head, you're in pretty good company around these parts. In general, too -- an estimated 20% of otherwise healthy adults regularly struggle to do basic arithmetic without showing their work. Don't give up hope, though! A new treatment being studied at Oxford University could make you better at doing math in your head for up to six months at a time -- and all you have to do is put on what looks like a steampunk gimp mask and let someone deliver electrical shocks to your brain!

It's that time of year again, when chances are that some of you have been finagled into filling out a bracket for the NCAA March Madness Tournament. While this probably made sense to our readers who enjoy college hoops, for many of you, it was probably just an exercise in being cornered by a co-worker who talked very quickly, handed you a sheet of paper and took five of your dollars, an experience much like being mugged but with less bruising. If you're intimidated, don't be. In the interest of taking the pressure off, it helps to recall that it is statistically impossible to fill out a perfect bracket, so you're just as well off having fun with it. Isn't that a load off?

Many of you are probably setting up the Christmas tree this weekend, and if you're anything like us, it's a daunting task. The pines and spruces of our youth, were always decorated with love, care, and not a little shouting. They also usually left one with the impression that we had jammed all the ornaments, tinsel, and lights at our disposal into a cannon, fired it in the general direction of the tree, and moved on with our lives. The University of Sheffield's Maths Society -- presumably sick of watching people like me decorate like an animal -- has offered up a Christmas miracle -- a series of calculations that, if followed, will get your tree looking picture perfect, from an exacting tinsel-to-tree ratio to a star or angel that's just the right height.

Sharing isn't always caring, it would seem. In penguins, for example, sharing seems to be the result of being kind of a jerk. Researchers investigating the physics of how penguins share warmth by huddling together on particularly cold Antarctic days found that each penguin is trying only to maximize the heat it retains while snuggling with its colleagues, but that the result is an egalitarian cuddle pile in which every penguin has more or less the same access to warmth. In other more important news, there are researchers working hard on revealing the science behind penguin snuggling, because hooray for science.

NYT poll-meister and knower of dark secrets Nate Silver took some flack last week for making bets on the outcome of the presidential election with Fox News personality Joe Scarborough. Silver was vindicated last night as his predictions for the election, on a state by state basis, turned out to be eerily accurate...almost too accurate, some might say. So as the nation looks to put a contentious presidential election behind us and move forward as a country, we can all turn to the most important question of the morning after the big night: Is Nate Silver a witch?

Warning: do not look at the image above if you have math anxiety. A new study by researchers at the University of Chicago has found that for people who get anxious at the idea of doing mathematics, just preparing to do a math problem can trigger activity in a part of your brain that registers physical pain.

Halloween is the best night of the year, end of story. Costumes are applied, tricks are played, horror movies are snuggled up in front of, but most importantly, children will go door to door adorably threatening to start doing property damage unless their demands for a sugary ransom are met swiftly and surely. Whatever else happens tonight, from ice storms to hurricanes to the raising of the dead, kids are going to get a lot of candy from people just like you. How much, exactly, though? Well, we don't know precisely how much candy we'll give kids tonight, but we've run some numbers on this matter, and you can find our conclusions after the jump.

As it turns out, the number that sits halfway between 1 and 9 might actually be a somewhat contested fact. If you ask the general public the question, folks might answer 5. If you ask kids or someone from a more traditional society, however, the answer is likely to be 3 a surprising amount of the time. They're not even wrong, exactly. It's all a matter of perception and how the brain processes numbers.

Prasad Raghavendra, an Assistant Professor at University of California, Berkeley, has found a whole new way of looking at and solving linear equations. Current methods of solving linear equations involve approximating the solution and improving upon it iteratively, but Raghavendra's approach seems to have eliminated the need for guesswork. Here, have some math.

A number of high school students and even college students have trouble with math. Specifically, these students have trouble with algebra and its offspring. This level of math can lead to significant roadblocks in the development of students' education. According to Andrew Hacker, one in four ninth graders fail to finish high school and algebra is often to blame. So, logically, we should get rid of algebra.

We all know how good GLaDOS is at articulating physics concepts in simple words - "Momentum, a function of mass and velocity, is conserved between portals. In layman's terms, speedy thing goes in, speedy thing comes out." Now that Portal 2 is headed to classrooms complete with lesson plans, she's going to be so good with children!

Unfortunately, a lot of calculators are going to truncate the results. However, if you manage to get a hold of one that doesn't, solving 1/998001 will generate all the three digit numbers from 000 to 999. And in order, no less. I have no idea how this works, but it's a pretty neat trick and even a bit unsettling. If you're a fan of this kind of spooky math fun, solving 1/9801 will generate all the consecutive two digit numbers. 

Fast-talking math-whiz Vi Hart has some thoughts to share with you about how triangles are really cool. 

Google has announced that they've added graphing calculator functionality right into search results. To use the new feature, a user must simply type a function into the search bar, click search, and the engine will do your math for you, and display the results in a tidy, graphical format.

Probability was my least favorite math unit, and this is why. Because even the questions that they assured me "make sense" look like this. It's multiple choice so, obviously, the answer is 25%, but that's there twice, so obviously the answer is 50%, but that's only 25% of the answers. So, obviously, the answer is: There is no answer. If the answer is 25%, then the answer is 50%, in which case the answer is 25%. Lather, rinse, repeat, crash to blue screen.

Welcome to the real world. Everything you thought you knew is wrong. Everything you thought you didn't know doesn't exist. You are a banana. The answer is Jenga. Word salad is for breakfast. Just accept it and move on.