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Solution: A Hat Trick + 1 of Hat Puzzles
...the expected amount? The winning strategy here can be called the “checksum modulo-3” method. It uses two mathematical principles: the checksum (you add a bunch of numbers and take the...
Why Sleeping Beauty Is Lost in Time
...it as an informal Polymath-style “peer review.” Readers are also invited to share their opinions in the comments section below. The famous Sleeping Beauty problem has polarized communities of mathematicians...
Janna Levin’s Theory of Doing Everything
...a trumpet and, on the wall that serves as Levin’s blackboard, a drink rail underlining a mathematical description of a black hole spinning in a magnetic field. Whether Levin is...
A Life Inspired by an Unexpected Genius
...helped launch the Spirit of Ramanujan Math Talent Initiative, a venture that “strives to find undiscovered mathematicians around the world and match them with advancement opportunities in the field.” Quanta...
Mathematicians Bridge Finite-Infinite Divide
...1921 commanded mathematicians to weave infinity completely into the fold of finitistic mathematics. Hilbert saw finitistic reducibility as the only remedy for the skepticism then surrounding the new mathematics of...
Is Infinity Real?
Euclidean geometry has a way of turning mathematically inclined students into lifelong math lovers, and I was no exception. But a primitive assumption has always troubled me: The definition of...
Moonshine Master Toys With String Theory
...Harvard University studying string theory, got to thinking about a paper that had recently been posted online. Its three coauthors had pointed out a numerical coincidence connecting far-flung mathematical objects....
A Drunkard’s Walk in Manhattan
...and a lifelong puzzle enthusiast. One of the most cherished mathematical learning moments of my youth came from an old and very funny math book, whose name I have sadly...
The Neuroscience Behind Bad Decisions
...known as divisive normalization, spells out the math behind this recalibration process. It proposes that neurons can send more efficient messages if they encode in their sequence of spikes only...