Mathematics

If you switch a lamp on and off an infinite number of times, will the light end up on or off? Somehow math says both

The “coastline paradox” helped to define fractals, but coastlines themselves turn out to be less fractal than thought

A mathematical ratio could explain why AI-generated art doesn’t evoke awe from viewers

Margaret Hamilton designed safety features for NASA inspired in part by her four-year-old

Several teams appeared to spend the second half of the U.S. professional basketball season losing games on purpose for a better chance at a high draft pick. New ideas propose to fix this incentive problem

In an open letter, thousands of researchers criticized the White House’s firing of the National Science Foundation’s board as “an alarming attack” on U.S. science

In one famous episode of The Simpsons, Homer finds a counterexample to Fermat’s last theorem

A ChatGPT AI has proved a conjecture with a method no human had thought of. Experts believe it may have further uses

Military strategists use game theory to evaluate possible strategies—but there are limits to what this approach to decision-making can achieve

A dispute over how to divvy up the pot in an interrupted game of chance led early mathematicians to invent modern risk assessment

For decades, mathematician Frank Merle has been embracing the messy math behind lasers and fluids

Take apart the grid in this math puzzle