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+15 +3
Graham’s Number Is Too Big for Me to Tell You How Big It Is | Roots of Unity, Scientific American Blog Network
A brief introduction to this gigantic number.
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+19 +4
Human biology inspires encryption method
Researchers at Lancaster University, UK have taken a hint from the way the human lungs and heart constantly communicate with each other, to devise an innovative, highly flexible encryption algorit...
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+16 +5
A Brief History of Infinitesimals: The Idea That Gave Birth to Modern Calculus
Learning to see the infinite in lines, planes and solids changed math forever
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+18 +7
E=MC2: Einstein's equation that gave birth to the atom bomb
Alok Jha: Albert Einstein's famous equation E=MC2 for the first time connected the mass of an object with its energy and heralded a new world of physics
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+19 +7
Off mass-shell: Pythagoras to the LHC, via Einstein and Feynman
Jon Butterworth: When a particle physicist describes something as "off mass-shell", they could be referring to a bit of quantum mechanics, or denouncing an unrealistic budget. Either way, it's a bit of jargon connecting Pythagoras to the LHC, via Einstein and Feynman
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+17 +8
Should you trust your financial advisor? Pseudo-mathematics and financial charlatanism
Your financial advisor calls you to suggest a new investment scheme. Drawing on 20 years of data, he/she asks: If you had invested according to this scheme in the past, which portfolio would have been the best? His/Her computer assembled thousands of simulated portfolios and calculated for each one a measure of return on risk. Out of this calculation, your advisor has chosen the "optimal" portfolio, which he/she recommends, noting it is based on sound mathematical methods. Should you invest?
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+20 +5
MIT students dominate Putnam Mathematical Competition, winning team event
Four of five top individual finishers, known as “Putnam Fellows,” also hail from MIT.
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+5 +1
'Body hack' app by math researchers shortcuts jet-lag recovery
A different kind of jet-lag mobile app released today by mathematicians reveals previously unknown shortcuts that can help travelers snap their internal clocks to new time zones as efficiently as possible.
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+17 +2
The brain injury that made me a math genius
Twelve years ago, Jason Padgett had never made it past pre-algebra. And then a violent mugging changed everything.
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+18 +7
Study confirms monkeys can do math
Scientists have long suspected that monkeys are capable of mental arithmetics and a new study is helping them prove it. A research team led by neurobiologist Margaret Livingstone trained three...
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+5 +1
Mathematicians, It’s Time to Reconsider Working for the NSA
For the past 10 months, a major international scandal has engulfed some of the world's largest employers of mathematicians. These organizations stand accused of law-breaking on an industrial scale and are now the object of widespread outrage. How has the mathematics community responded? Largely by ignoring it.
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+6 +2
Can You Catch Your Own Football Pass
A new video purports to show Jamaal Charles going long and tossing a football to himself. The video might be a fake (jury's still out) but could such a thing even be possible according to the laws of physics?
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+18 +5
Earthquake cloaking could protect cities from temblors
French researchers say they could soon offer quake-proofing with seismic ‘invisibility cloaks’ that cancel out shock waves. Philip Dooley reports.
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+27 +5
The Mathematics of Murder: Should a Robot Sacrifice Your Life to Save Two?
It happens quickly—more quickly than you, being human, can fully process. A front tire blows, and your autonomous SUV swerves. But rather than veering left, into the opposing lane of traffic, the robotic vehicle steers right. Brakes engage, the system tries to correct itself, but there’s too much momentum. Like a cornball stunt in a bad action movie, you are over the cliff, in free fall.
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+16 +4
Is Common Core Really the Answer?
Common Core is a new (controversial) Education standard for K-12
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+19 +8
How To Marry The Right Girl: A Mathematical Solution
Poor Johannes Kepler. One of the greatest astronomers ever, the man who figured out the laws of planetary motion, a genius, scholar and mathematician — in 1611, he needed a wife. The previous Mrs. Kepler had died of Hungarian spotted fever, so, with kids to raise and a household to manage, he decided to line up some candidates — but it wasn't going very well.
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+20 +4
Explained: How does a soccer ball swerve?
It happens every four years: The World Cup begins and some of the world’s most skilled players carefully line up free kicks, take aim — and shoot way over the goal. The players are all trying to bend the ball into a top corner of the goal, often over a wall of defensive players and away from the reach of a lunging goalkeeper. Yet when such shots go awry in the World Cup, a blame game usually sets in.
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+20 +3
Physicists finally explain why your earphones are always tangled
We performed experiments in which a string was tumbled inside a box and found that complex knots often form within seconds. We used mathematical knot theory to analyze the knots. Above a critical string length, the probability P of knotting at first increased sharply with length but then saturated below 100%. This behavior differs from that of mathematical self-avoiding random walks, where P has been proven to approach 100%.
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+12 +4
The Scientific Way to Cut a Cake
Alex Bellos on cutting a cake using scientific principles.
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+3 +1
Mathematicians Solve The Topological Mystery Behind The “Brazuca” World Cup Football
Just in time for the World Cup final
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