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The Math of Catastrophe
Tipping points in our climate predictions are both wildly dramatic and wildly uncertain. Can mathematicians make them useful? In the 1960s, the Soviet climatologist and mathematician Mikhail Budyko set out...
A Number Theorist Who Bridges Math and Time
...the idea of Olympiads,” he said. “I think if that was what mathematicians really did, I wouldn’t enjoy being a mathematician.” Mathematics is a comparatively straightforward subject in which to...
Why the Sum of Three Cubes Is a Hard Math Problem
Looking for answers in infinite space is hard. High school math can help narrow your search. Given that humans have been studying numbers for thousands of years, you might think...
New Math Book Rescues Landmark Topology Proof
...correct at all. In a 2012 post on MathOverflow, one commenter referred to the proof as a “monstrosity of a paper” and said he had “never met a mathematician who...
Quanta Relaunches Hyperjumps Math Game
Explore a universe of numbers and arithmetic in our new and improved interactive math game, Hyperjumps! It’s the year 2718. Humanity has invented a warp drive that enables a spacecraft...
How Does Math Keep Secrets?
...mathematical analysis. And a key figure in bringing about the mathematical analysis of cryptography was Claude Shannon, who in the late 1940s wrote some influential papers, starting with a mathematical...
The Year in Math and Computer Science
...in mathematics, the Riemann hypothesis, in an essay and video. Expanding Mathematical Bridges Often, a great mathematical advance not only answers a major question, but also provides a new...
The Year in Math
...about the nature of mathematical truth. Eugenia Cheng spoke with Joy of Why podcast host Steven Strogatz about category theory, a sort of “mathematics of mathematics” that can scare off...
The Universal Pattern Popping Up in Math, Physics and Biology
...series dives deep into math and physics theories, kicking off with ‘universality,’ a phenomenon that reveals underlying mathematical connections in the world,” Driscoll wrote in an email. “Depicting universality on...