I have two children, one of whom is a son born on a Tuesday. What is the probability that I have two boys? Gary Foshee, a puzzle designer from Issaquah, Wash., posed this puzzle during his talk this ...
A new study introduces choice engineering—a powerful new way to guide decisions using math instead of guesswork. By applying carefully designed mathematical models, researchers found they could ...
The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. David Bessis was drawn to mathematics for the same reason that many people are driven away: He didn’t understand how it worked. Unlike ...
Research in mathematics is a deeply imaginative and intuitive process. This might come as a surprise for those who are still recovering from high-school algebra. What does the world look like at the ...
, “we would be unable to build a skyscraper, hold a national election, plan a wedding, or pay for a chicken at the market.” The central role of numbers in our world testifies to the brain’s uncanny ...
University of Florida provides funding as a founding partner of The Conversation US. Math can’t catch a break. These days, people on both ends of the political spectrum are lining up to deride the ...
There’s a line from the original Star Trek where Khan says, “Improve a mechanical device and you may double productivity, but improve man and you gain a thousandfold.” Joan Horvath and Rich Cameron ...