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Is Infinity Real?
Euclidean geometry has a way of turning mathematically inclined students into lifelong math lovers, and I was no exception. But a primitive assumption has always troubled me: The definition of...
Solution: ‘A Drunkard’s Walk in Manhattan’
...is the same process that underlies diffusion: the rate at which the sugar or sweetener spreads into your morning tea or coffee. The funny math book that I referred to...
The Strange Second Life of String Theory
...it’s become almost unrecognizable, even to string theorists. “Things have gotten almost postmodern,” said Dijkgraaf, who is a painter as well as mathematical physicist. The mathematics that have come out...
How Can We Tell Which Forecasts Are True?
...enthusiast. We are all familiar with innumeracy — the lack of a basic knowledge of mathematics. A significant proportion of the population is effectively mathematically illiterate and can easily be...
Solution: ‘Which Forecasts Are True?’
...to gauge the accuracy of the forecasters. For math lovers, it’s also a chance to assess how well mathematical models can predict complex real-world phenomena and to expose their pitfalls....
Can Analogies Reveal the Laws of Physics?
...that experimenting on sonic black holes may indeed shed light on real ones because there might be a “common cause” underlying their similar mathematics. In the same way, yellow fingers...
Quantum Gravity’s Time Problem
...by the holographic emergence of space-time from quantum entanglement. Researchers have worked out the math showing how the hologram arises in toy universes that possess a fisheye space-time geometry known...
Visionary Mathematician Vladimir Voevodsky Dies at 51
...In math as in life, Vladimir Voevodsky played by his own rules. Voevodsky, a Russian-born mathematical prodigy, produced a string of daring insights in the 1990s that revolutionized one of...
Mathematicians Crack the Cursed Curve
A famously difficult mathematical problem resisted solution for over 40 years. Mathematicians have finally resolved it by following an intuition that links number theory to physics. Mathematical proofs are elaborate...