The restaurant problem reveals why human shortcuts can work surprisingly well.
We’ve heard a lot about what it can do for businesses, and for individuals, but what about society?
Cartels are Mexico's fifth largest employer. They are recruiting faster than the government can arrest them.
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Scientists have discovered that the Chinese money plant hides a remarkable geometric system inside its leaves, revealing that nature may solve complex problems using mathematical rules similar to those found in computer science and city planning. People often see meaningful shapes and patterns in random things. Maybe you have looked at clouds and spotted a [...]
The famous mathematical paradox of jagged shores gets a reality check from 130,000 global islands.
Abstract art has a hidden structure that AI just can't replicate.
Ancient scribes, priests, and surveyors were using the famous much earlier.
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A new AI breakthrough helps scientists uncover the hidden forces shaping the world around us. Engineers at the University of Pennsylvania have developed a new AI-based technique that could help scientists solve some of the most difficult mathematical problems used to study the natural world. The approach, called “Mollifier Layers,” is designed to handle inverse [...]
Have you ever wondered how likely it is to find a message in a bottle, especially an old one? Let's do the math.
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New research questions whether memory reliably reflects reality. What if your entire past never actually happened? That unsettling idea is at the center of a new study by SFI Professor David Wolpert, SFI Fractal Faculty member Carlo Rovelli, and physicist Jordan Scharnhorst. They revisit the “Boltzmann brain” hypothesis, a thought experiment that has challenged physicists [...]
A.I. has always been compared to human intelligence, but that may not be the right way to think about it. What it does well can help predict what jobs it may replace.
Mathematician Katharina Hübner explores objects from a mysterious numerical world that reveal themselves only through fascinating and unexpected detours. There are places no one will ever visit, simply because they […]
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A new mathematical investigation challenges long-held assumptions about how to model randomness. At any given moment, countless molecules are moving unpredictably through the air around you. Physicists rely on a principle called the Boltzmann distribution to make sense of this apparent randomness. Instead of tracking the exact position of each particle, this law describes the [...]
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A 150-year-old geometry rule has been overturned after mathematicians found two different torus surfaces with identical metric and curvature. For more than 150 years, a principle attributed to French mathematician Pierre Ossian Bonnet has guided surface theory. It states that if the metric and mean curvature of a compact surface are known at every point, [...]
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New research has found ChatGPT-5.2 can generate original mathematical proofs, introducing “vibe-proving” as a new AI reasoning method. AI accelerates discovery, but human verification remains necessary. Researchers at VUB’s Data Analytics Lab report that commercial language models can produce original mathematical proofs. In their study, the team shows that OpenAI’s large language model…
Faltings introduced "powerful tools in arithmetic geometry".
A single server smashed the pi world record, churning out 314 trillion digits in 110 days.
Every year on 14th March, mathematics enthusiasts celebrate Pi Day, dedicated to the circle constant π, which is used to calculate the circumference and area of a circle. The commemorative […]
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A page from the legendary Archimedes Palimpsest, considered lost for several decades, have been identified by a French national researcher at the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Blois. The leaf contains a passage from the treatise On the Sphere and the Cylinder, Book I, Propositions 39 to 41, much of which remains largely legible on the […]
The post Lost Page from Archimedes Manuscript Found in Museum…
The introduction of AI into mathematics represents a seismic shift in what it means to do math.
When Ukrainian mathematician Maryna Viazovska received a Fields Medal—widely regarded as the Nobel Prize for mathematics—in July 2022, it was big news. Not only was she the second woman to accept the honor in the award’s 86-year history, but she collected the medal just months after her country had been invaded by Russia. Nearly four years later, Viazovska is making waves again. Today, in a…
Mathematics is often regarded as the ideal domain for measuring AI progress effectively. Math’s step-by-step logic is easy to track, and its definitive automatically verifiable answers remove any human or subjective factors. But AI systems are improving at such a pace that math benchmarks are struggling to keep up.
Way back in November 2024, non-profit research organization Epoch AI quietly…
AI could soon spew out hundreds of mathematical proofs that look "right" but contain hidden flaws, or proofs so complex we can't verify them. How will we know if they're right?
Long before humans learned to write numbers or invented writing, they were already thinking mathematically.
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Math struggles in kids may stem from brains that have a harder time learning from mistakes—not just understanding numbers. Researchers at Stanford University, led by Hyesang Chang, set out to understand why certain children have more difficulty learning math than others. In a new paper published today (February 9) in JNeurosci, the team examined how [...]
We generally associate the origins of mathematical thinking with the emergence of writing, about five to six thousand years ago. However, a new study challenges this assumption looking at floral designs found on the painted pottery sherds from the Halafian sites across northern Mesopotamia, dating back 8000 years.
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Category: History, Science
Tags: Mathematics,…
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