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+16 +6
The Math That Predicted the Revolutions Sweeping the Globe Right Now
It's happening in Ukraine, Venezuela, Thailand, Bosnia, Syria, and beyond. Revolutions, unrest, and riots are sweeping the globe. The near-simultaneous eruption of violent protest can seem random and chaotic; inevitable symptoms of an unstable world. But there's at least one common thread between the disparate nations, cultures, and people in conflict, one element that has demonstrably proven to make these uprisings more likely: high global food prices.
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+20 +3
Quality of white matter in the brain is crucial for adding and multiplying (but not subracting and dividing)
A new study has found that healthy 12-year-olds who score well in addition and multiplication have higher-quality white matter tracts. This correlation does not appear to apply to subtraction and division.
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+3 +1
Moebius Transformations Revealed
A short film depicting the beauty of Moebius Transformations in mathematics. The movie shows how moving to a higher dimension can make the transformations easier to understand. The full version is available at http://www.ima.umn.edu/~arnold/moebius/ The background music (from Schumann's Kinderszenen, Op. 15, I) is performed by Donald Betts and available at http://www.musopen.com.
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+19 +7
The nature of color: New formula to calculate hue improves accuracy of color analysis
Color is crucial in ecological studies, playing an important role in studies of flower and fruit development, responses to heat/drought stress, and plant–pollinator communication. But, measuring color variation is difficult, and available formulas sometimes give misleading results. An improved formula to calculate hue (one of three variables characterizing color) has now been developed.
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+18 +6
5-Year-Olds Can Learn Calculus
Why playing with algebraic and calculus concepts—rather than doing arithmetic drills—may be a better way to introduce children to math
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+13 +4
Equations Are Art inside a Mathematician’s Brain
When mathematicians describe equations as beautiful, they are not lying. Brain scans show that their minds respond to beautiful equations in the same way other people respond to great paintings or masterful music. The finding could bring neuroscientists closer to understanding the neural basis of beauty, a concept that is surprisingly hard to define.
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+8 +2
Are you smarter than a 5-year-old? Preschoolers can do algebra
Millions of high school and college algebra students are united in a shared agony over solving for x and y, and for those to whom the answers don't come easily, it gets worse: Most preschoolers and kindergarteners can do some algebra before even entering a math class. A new study finds that most preschoolers and kindergarteners, or children between 4 and 6, can do basic algebra naturally.
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+12 +3
Sound, light and water waves and how scientists worked out the mathematics
What violins have in common with the sea – the wave principle. By Alok Jha
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+19 +5
Equation to describe competition between genes
Biologists typically conduct experiments first, and then develop models afterward to show how data fit with theory. New research flips that practice on its head. A biophysicist tackles questions in cellular biology as a physicist would -- by first formulating a model that can make predictions and then testing those predictions. This research group has recently developed a mathematical model that accounts for the way genes compete with each other for the proteins that regulate their expression.
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+12 +4
Pi Is (still) Wrong.
I missed pi day, so here is Vi Hart explaining why pi is wrong. See you all on tau day (American here, so that will be June 28 in our calendar system)!
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+19 +6
It could take 5,000 years for someone to get a perfect NCAA tournament bracket
You know that much-ballyhooed billion-dollar challenge offered by Quicken Loans and Warren Buffett? It’s a brilliant marketing gimmick, of course, but does anyone stand a reasonable chance of getting the money? I mean, somebody wins those Powerball jackpots even though the odds are astronomical. The perfect bracket winner could be you, right? No, no it could not.
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+19 +2
Math models analyze long-term criminal activity patterns in a population
In a paper published last November in Multiscale Modeling and Simulation: A SIAM Interdisciplinary Journal, authors Henri Berestycki, Nancy Rodríguez, and Lenya Ryzhik show that the assumption of a population's natural tendency towards crime significantly changes long-term criminal activity patterns. ...
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+16 +4
Zeno’s Paradox Is a Trick—But a Very Interesting Trick
The Greek philosopher Zeno wrote a book of paradoxes nearly 2,500 years ago. “Achilles and the Tortoise” is the easiest to understand, but it’s devilishly difficult to explain away. For those who haven’t already learned it, here are the basics of Zeno’s logic puzzle, as we understand it after generations...
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+9 +1
The Greek Legacy: How the Ancient Greeks Shaped Modern Mathematics
Here's an animation we created in collaboration with The Royal Institution telling the tale of Ancient Greek Mathematics in just two minutes.
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+1 +1
Addictive Candy Crush video game is officially hard - physics-math - 11 March 2014 - New Scientist
A mathematical analysis of the game reveals that it belongs to a class of fiendish computational problems.
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+21 +8
A Horse of the Same Color
An inductive proof that all horses must be of the same color
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+18 +5
Overcoming structural uncertainty in computer models
A computer model is a representation of the functional relationship between one set of parameters, which forms the model input, and a corresponding set of target parameters, which forms the model output. A true model for a particular problem can rarely be defined with certainty. Scientists have now offered a method to incorporate judgments into a model about structural uncertainty that results from building an 'incorrect' model.
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+22 +8
A new mathematics for experimental science
Mathematics is the ultimate scientific tool. For centuries it has been used to describe the forces of nature, from planetary motion to fluid dynamics. It helped unlock the secrets of DNA and unleashed the Digital Revolution. Today, in the age of high-resolution detectors and international research collaborations, ...
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+15 +4
La successione di Fibonacci diventa un quadro: l'arte è matematica
Interesting images based upon various mathematical sequences and constants.
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+18 +6
Empire State Building vanishes: amazing images of geometrical illusion
Alex Bellos: A mathematician has updated a classic geometrical puzzle – and explained how it works
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