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How Math (and Vaccines) Keep You Safe From the Flu

February 5, 2018

Simple math shows how widespread vaccination can disrupt the exponential spread of disease and prevent epidemics.

Solution: ‘Triangulation and Motion Sickness’

January 30, 2018

A method for estimating distances in sailing and astrophysics helps explain why riding on buses and boats can make us nauseous.

What Makes the Hardest Equations in Physics So Difficult?

January 16, 2018

The Navier-Stokes equations describe simple, everyday phenomena, like water flowing from a garden hose, yet they provide a million-dollar mathematical challenge.

Q&A

In Praise of Simple Problems

January 9, 2018

The mathematician Richard Schwartz finds the hidden depth lurking in simple mathematical puzzles.

How Triangulation Leads to Knowledge

January 4, 2018

What does measuring distances in sailing and astrophysics have to with motion sickness?

Mathematicians Find Wrinkle in Famed Fluid Equations

December 21, 2017

Two mathematicians prove that under certain extreme conditions, the Navier-Stokes equations output nonsense.

Q&A

A Mathematician Who Decodes the Patterns Stamped Out by Life

December 20, 2017

Corina Tarnita deciphers bizarre patterns in the soil created by competing life-forms.

The (Math) Problem With Pentagons

December 11, 2017

Triangles fit effortlessly together, as do squares. When it comes to pentagons, what gives?

Mathematicians Crack the Cursed Curve

December 7, 2017

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.

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