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How Do Mathematicians Know Their Proofs Are Correct?
What makes a proof stronger than a guess? What does evidence look like in the realm of mathematical abstraction? Hear the mathematician Melanie Matchett Wood explain how probability helps to...
A Mathematician Dancing Between Algebra and Geometry
...Like many people who would go on to become mathematicians, Wei Ho grew up competing in math contests. In eighth grade, she won the Mathcounts state competition in Wisconsin, and...
How Failure Has Made Mathematics Stronger
The topologist Danny Calegari discusses the inevitability of disappointment in math, and how to learn from it. Reading a math paper is a bit like having dinner at a nice...
The Year in Mathematics
Explore a shape that can’t pass through itself, a teenage prodigy, and two new kinds of infinity. At 17, Hannah Cairo Solved a Major Math Mystery Mathematics is, at its...
A Wormhole Between Physics and Education
...You Love or Hate Math and Science? Share your early math and science learning experiences and explore other readers’ interactive survey results. I thought, “OK, I’ll fall back and I’ll...
For Persi Diaconis’ Next Magic Trick …
...on its head. “The mathematics of any model for spatial mixing is in pretty bad shape,” Diaconis said. Diaconis hopes that the union of fluid-flow techniques and card-shuffling math might...
A Mathematician Who Dances to the Joys and Sorrows of Discovery
Federico Ardila opens up about his journey as a mathematician, teacher, Colombian transplant, DJ and creator of mathematical spaces. “Nadie te quita lo bailado.” (No one can take from you...
How Writing Changes Mathematical Thought
David E. Dunning explores how mathematical notation is a social, world-building technology. It’s natural to think of math as being fundamentally abstract. Whether it’s invented or discovered, its truths are...
Using Mathematics to Repair a Masterpiece
...mathematical problems that have already led us far beyond a simple application of off-the-shelf tools. We have not yet had to build new mathematical theory, but I expect it is...