How a centuries-old math puzzle helped us see inside the human brain. By Steven Strogatz Photo illustrations by Jens Mortensen Each installment of “Math, Revealed” starts with an object, uncovers the ...

For 50 years, mathematicians have believed that the total number of real numbers is unknowable. A new proof suggests otherwise. In October 2018, David Asperó was on holiday in Italy, gazing out a car ...

In 2020 one of us, Toni, asked another of us, Marco, to come to his office at the Institute of Photonic Sciences, a large research center in Castelldefels near Barcelona. “There is a problem that I ...

Every mathematician has a story that goes something like this. You’re at a party, and someone asks what you do for a living. “I’m a mathematician,” you say. “You must be a genius!” they reply. Or ...

President Trump said Thursday that “real” jobs numbers will come next year, ahead of the Bureau of Labor Statistics’s (BLS) first jobs report since he fired its leader in response to dismal numbers in ...

The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. Hard problems are usually not a welcome sight. But cryptographers love them. That’s because certain hard math problems underpin the ...

In the early 1970s mathematician Donald Knuth spent a sabbatical with his wife in Norway. The time was meant to be spent relaxing. Yet one night he woke up his partner in a state of agitation. He ...

Imaginary numbers might seem like unicorns and goblins — interesting but irrelevant to reality. But for describing matter at its roots, imaginary numbers turn out to be essential. They seem to be ...

American suburbs have long faced the issue of white families leaving as more residents of color move in. But in Shaker Heights, Ohio, Black families, upset about changes in the schools, are trickling ...

If you’ve ever taken an algebra or physics class, then you’ve met a parabola, the simple curve that can model how a ball flies through the air. The most important part of a parabola is the vertex — ...

In June, the FBI got a warrant to hunt through the Google accounts of Abedemi Rufai, a Nigerian state government official. What they found, they said in a sworn affidavit, was all the ingredients for ...