How Many Aliens Are in the Milky Way? Astronomers Turn to Statistics for Answers
The tenets of Thomas Bayes, an 18th-century statistician and minister, underpin the latest estimates of the prevalence of extraterrestrial life
Math1511 articles archived since 1845
The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle of Social Science Modeling
It’s known as the “curse of dimensionality,” and it’s why our estimates of how a disease will behave will always have imprecision
Multistate Disagreement over the Length of the Foot to End
In 2023 every U.S. land surveyor will begin using a single international standard
Small Numbers Can Have Huge Impacts on Climate and Health
A number can be tiny in relative terms but hugely important nonetheless
Coronavirus Antibody Tests Have a Mathematical Pitfall
The accuracy of screening tests is highly dependent on the infection rate
The Last Root of Unity
It’s time to say goodbye to the blog
One Weird Trick to Make Calculus More Beautiful
The strange power of complex analysis
Proving a Legendary Mathematician Wrong
Remembering “Euler’s spoilers,” who showed that special magic squares exist
When Rational Points Are Few and Far Between
BEAM program manager Ruthi Hortsch shares her love of Faltings’s theorem
Diana Davis’s Beautiful Pentagons
This mathematician turns her research into fashion and toys
Pi in the Sky: General Relativity Passes the Ratio’s Test
Using gravitational waves to approximate pi, physicists see no problem with Einstein’s theory
Geometry Points to Coronavirus Drug Target Candidates
A new mathematical model predicts areas on a virus that might be especially vulnerable to disabling treatments
The Monster That Expands Our Mathematical Imaginations
Ben Orlin shares his favorite fractal curve
Discovering Joyful Math Away from the Classroom
Here are resources for students, parents and other learners
Prime Factorization as Verse
Creating poetry with the fundamental theorem of arithmetic
The Theorem That Applies to Everything from Search Algorithms to Epidemiology
Perron-Frobenius theorem and linear algebra have many virtues to extol
Remembering Mathematical Magician John Conway
His creative and influential ideas spilled over into quantum physics, philosophy and computer science
Not Just Fun and Games
Best known for inventing the game of Life, John H. Conway is adept at finding the theorems hidden in simple puzzles
That Time It Took a Student 44 Years to Get Her Degree because She Was a Woman
Christine Ladd-Franklin received a Ph.D. in 1926 for work completed in 1882
Mathematical Proof That Rocked Number Theory Will Be Published
But some experts say author Shinichi Mochizuki failed to fix a fatal flaw in the solution of a major arithmetic problem
