BTW.. *mathematics* is not a plural! It is a mass noun.

Uncountable common nouns are known as mass nouns. Some are uncountable because they’re abstract or can’t be divided into discrete units—for example:

bravery
music
evidence
water
countryside
humanity

Other mass nouns are used to denote indeterminate aggregations of things that in other terms may be countable. For example, furniture is a mass noun even when it denotes an understood number of pieces of furniture. Here are a few other examples:

sushi
faculty
media
luggage
meat
garbage
majority

Most mass nouns, especially the abstract ones, usually take a singular verb