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2021’s Biggest Breakthroughs in Math and Computer Science
...answer about the nature of infinity. And a mathematician finally managed to model quantum gravity. Emily Buder/Quanta Magazine; Adrian Vasquez de Velasco for Quanta Magazine; Myriam Wares for Quanta Magazine...
Play First and Lose: Zugzwang in Chess, Math and Pizzas
...form consists of two players removing bunches of stones from any of several piles until all the stones are removed. In its many variations, Nim has generated several mathematical results...
Steven Strogatz’s Secrets of Math Communication
Steven Strogatz — the acclaimed mathematician and author — hosts the new Quanta Magazine podcast “The Joy of Why.” On March 18, 2022, he joined Quanta editor Thomas Lin for...
The Man Who Revolutionized Computer Science With Math
Leslie Lamport talks about the importance of programming instead of coding, how he developed distributed systems and his favorite algorithm. Photo by Talia Herman for Quanta Magazine; video by Emily...
The Secret Math Behind Mind-Reading Magic Tricks
...de Bruijn sequence of order 4 using 16 cards. This puzzle is one of many mathematics-based card tricks in the book Magical Mathematics: The Mathematical Ideas That Animate Great Magic...
‘Monumental’ Math Proof Solves Triple Bubble Problem and More
...three volumes, the mathematician Frank Morgan of Williams College speculated in 2007, “could well take another hundred years.” Now, mathematicians have been spared that long wait — and have gotten...
2022’s Biggest Breakthroughs in Math
In 2022, mathematicians solved a centuries-old geometry question, proved the best way to minimize the surface area of clusters of up to five bubbles and proved a sweeping statement about...
Simpler Math Predicts How Close Ecosystems Are to Collapse
...more frequent and severe over larger areas. The effects of that transition could ripple out globally to other ecosystems. A recent breakthrough in the mathematical modeling of ecosystems could make...
How a Computer Broke a 50-Year Math Record
...AlphaTensor quickly rediscovered — and surpassed, for some cases — the reigning algorithm discovered by German mathematician Volker Strassen in 1969. Christopher Webb Young/Quanta Magazine; Emily Zhang for Quanta Magazine...