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Emmy Murphy Is a Mathematician Who Finds Beauty in Flexibility

March 27, 2023

The prize-winning geometer feels most fulfilled when exploring the fertile ground where constraint meets creation.

The Symmetry That Makes Solving Math Equations Easy

March 24, 2023

Learn why the quadratic formula works and why quadratics are easier to solve than cubics.

Wormhole Experiment Called Into Question

March 23, 2023

Last fall, a team of physicists announced that they had teleported a qubit through a holographic wormhole in a quantum computer. Now another group suggests that’s not quite what happened.

Bob Metcalfe, Ethernet Pioneer, Wins Turing Award

March 22, 2023

The American researcher was recognized for his central role in inventing, standardizing and commercializing the ubiquitous networking technology.

Is There Math Beyond the Equal Sign?

March 22, 2023

Can mathematics handle things that are essentially the same without being exactly equal? Category theorist Eugenia Cheng and host Steven Strogatz discuss the power and pleasures of abstraction.

Surprise Computer Science Proof Stuns Mathematicians

March 21, 2023

For decades, mathematicians have been inching forward on a problem about which sets contain evenly spaced patterns of three numbers. Last month, two computer scientists blew past all of those results.

Dinosaur Bone Study Reveals That Not All Giants Grew Alike

March 20, 2023

A survey of prehistoric bones reveals that T. rex and some of its cousins had more than one way to reach enormous sizes. Evolution may have preserved that variation in modern animals too.

The Unpredictable Abilities Emerging From Large AI Models

March 16, 2023

Large language models like ChatGPT are now big enough that they’ve started to display startling, unpredictable behaviors.

Coloring by Numbers Reveals Arithmetic Patterns in Fractions

March 15, 2023

In a recent paper, two mathematicians showed that a particular pattern is unavoidable when fractions are categorized.

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