What's up in
mathematics
Latest Articles
How Simple Math Moves the Needle
The spatial intuition behind a three-point turn offers an on-ramp to a century-old geometry problem.
Mathematicians Cross the Line to Get to the Point
A new paper establishes a long-conjectured bound about the size of the overlap between sets of lines and points.
Behold Modular Forms, the ‘Fifth Fundamental Operation’ of Math
Modular forms are one of the most beautiful and mysterious objects in mathematics. What are they?
A Tower of Conjectures That Rests Upon a Needle
On its surface, the Kakeya conjecture is a simple statement about rotating needles. But it underlies a wealth of mathematics.
The Biggest Smallest Triangle Just Got Smaller
A new proof breaks a decades-long drought of progress on the problem of estimating the size of triangles created by cramming points into a square.
Alan Turing and the Power of Negative Thinking
Mathematical proofs based on a technique called diagonalization can be relentlessly contrarian, but they help reveal the limits of algorithms.
Why Mathematical Proof Is a Social Compact
Number theorist Andrew Granville on what mathematics really is — and why objectivity is never quite within reach.
An Old Conjecture Falls, Making Spheres a Lot More Complicated
The telescope conjecture gave mathematicians a handle on ways to map one sphere to another. Now that it has been disproved, the universe of shapes has exploded.
Complexity Theory’s 50-Year Journey to the Limits of Knowledge
How hard is it to prove that problems are hard to solve? Meta-complexity theorists have been asking questions like this for decades. A string of recent results has started to deliver answers.