Stories by Evelyn Lamb

Mathematical crochet shines in Daina Taimina's model of a mathematical surface

When I tutored elementary school math, one of my favorite things to show the kids was how to multiply by 9 using their fingers. (I apologize, but this trick assumes that you have five fingers on each hand.

I recently finished the excellent book Math on Trial by Leila Schneps and Coralie Colmez. In it, the authors collect examples where statistical errors have possibly altered the outcome of trials.

Zombies. They’re everywhere. My dentist and his assistant spent my last visit and chatting about The Walking Dead while drilling into my head, and it seems like every reasonably large town hosts a zombie run.

Welcome to the 103rd Carnival of Mathematics! The number 103 is prime, and it’s the “older” twin of a pair of twin primes as well—or is it the “younger” twin because it comes later?

This is the second in a series of interviews I have been doing for the Association for Women in Mathematics. (You can read my first interview, with dynamicists Laura DeMarco and Amie Wilkinson, here.) In my interviews, I’m “listening in” on a conversation between two women mathematicians.

The dissonance between the mathematical and plain English meanings of terms can prove challenging for students

The Carnival of Mathematics is a monthly blogging round-up of fun math-related blog posts organized by the friendly folks of the Aperiodical.

Haversine? Exsecant? An introduction to obsolete trig functions and why we don't use them anymore

This is a guest post from Lillian Pierce, who has been doing an interview series for the Association for Women in Mathematics. Her series has focused on women who are balancing motherhood with their mathematical careers.

It’s food week here on the Scientific American blog network. Food is a really important part of our health, and there’s a lot to learn about the science of food: taste, health, agriculture, how we eat.

I just finished my first week teaching after a few years out of the classroom. Whenever I teach, I’m struck by how much detail I need to put in my notes to make sure I don’t say something absolutely ridiculous when I’m in front of the class.

Last Monday, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) released a video of the past 10 years of weather in the Americas. The Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite GOES-12, which had monitored the weather in North and South America since April 2003, was retired on August 16.

On Saturday, my Twitter feed alerted me to a totally non-sensationalistic Gawker article called More Buck For Your Bang: People Who Have More Sex Make The Most Money.

“There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one’s own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind.