If pure math can teach us anything, it’s this: occasionally, your special interest might just change the world. For Joshua Zahl and Hong Wang, that special interest was the Kakeya conjecture. “I read ...
When a top-tier mathematician announced in August that he had proved one of the greatest problems in mathematics, the claim was trumpeted in the New York Times, Nature, Science and the Boston Globe.
Two US high schoolers believe they have cracked a mathematical mystery left unproven for centuries. Calcea Johnson and Ne'Kiya Jackson looked at the Pythagorean theorem, foundational to trigonometry.
Number theorist Andrew Granville on what mathematics really is — and why objectivity is never quite within reach. In 2012, the mathematician Shinichi Mochizuki claimed he had solved the abc conjecture ...
What if engineers could design a better jet with mathematical equations that drastically reduce the need for experimental testing? Or what if weather prediction models could predict details in the ...
Computer-assisted of mathematical proofs are not new. For example, computers were used to confirm the so-called 'four color theorem.' In a short release, 'Proof by computer,' the American Mathematical ...
There’s a curious contradiction at the heart of today’s most capable AI models that purport to “reason”: They can solve routine math problems with accuracy, yet when faced with formulating deeper ...
The next number has to be 32, right? The pattern is clear: To find the next number, double the current one. We have 1 × 2 = 2; 2 × 2 = 4; 4 × 2 = 8; 8 × 2 = 16. The next number should be 16 × 2 = 32.
Ananyo Bhattacharya is chief science writer at the London Institute for Mathematical Sciences and the author of The Man from the Future: The Visionary Ideas of John von Neumann. One of the biggest ...
Peter Scholze wants to rebuild much of modern mathematics, starting from one of its cornerstones. Now, he has received validation for a proof at the heart of his quest from an unlikely source: a ...