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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...
Unheralded Mathematician Bridges the Prime Gap
On April 17, a paper arrived in the inbox of Annals of Mathematics, one of the discipline’s preeminent journals. Written by a mathematician virtually unknown to the experts in his...
Are We Thinking Correctly About AI Intelligence?
...in applied math. But I do think pure math will expire before applied math does, and maybe neither will. Maybe we’ll just keep going forever. What does it look like...
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...
Mathematicians Resurrect Hilbert’s 13th Problem
...a whole array, this whole beautiful web of math.” The Roots of the Matter Mathematicians have been probing polynomials for as long as math has been around. Stone tablets carved...
How Does Graph Theory Shape Our World?
...more understanding now of how important math is. I used to tell people I’m a mathematician, “They would say, oh, yeah, I’m terrible in math. Math is really boring.” And...
A Movement to Close the Gender Gap in Mathematics
...issues in mathematics, which took place during the Brazilian Math Colloquium, the biggest gathering in the Brazilian mathematical community, which happens every two years. And this was actually the first...
Mathematics as a Team Sport
...By highlighting these problems, Powell was getting at maybe the biggest difference between the way mathematicians and non-mathematicians see the subject. To the latter group, mathematics feels settled. “What else...