-
40 votes
-
Are there politics in mathematics?
Curious if there are movements within the governance or research pertaining to the field that act to promote or suppress certain ideas? Was watching the “Infinity explained in 5 different levels”...
Curious if there are movements within the governance or research pertaining to the field that act to promote or suppress certain ideas? Was watching the “Infinity explained in 5 different levels” and thought… maybe there are trends for or against interpretations and/or abstractions that get a rise in people…
33 votes -
Why the world’s best mathematicians are hoarding chalk
27 votes -
COVID-19 kills renowned Princeton mathematician, 'Game Of Life' inventor John Conway in three days
26 votes -
What is a math department worth?
25 votes -
Seximal: a better way to count
24 votes -
Why do Biden's votes not follow Benford's Law? Debunking an election fraud claim
24 votes -
A mathematician has resolved the Sensitivity Conjecture, a nearly thirty-year-old problem in computer science
24 votes -
Happy Tau/2 day everyone!
22 votes -
The Monty Hall problem
22 votes -
Not every student needs Algebra 2. UC should be flexible on math requirement.
21 votes -
An aperiodic monotile exists!
21 votes -
A math problem stumped experts for fifty years. This grad student from Maine solved it in days
19 votes -
Happy Universal Palindrome Day!
19 votes -
It’s time to talk about ditching statistical significance
19 votes -
Even after thirty-one trillion digits, we’re still no closer to the end of pi
18 votes -
A sci-fi writer and an anonymous 4chan poster advance a mathematical permutation problem
18 votes -
UK hobbyist discovers new unique shapes, stunning mathematicians
17 votes -
I need help with a story that involves math
I'm creating the concept for a story called The Little Differences. It's about an accountant that, one day, out of the blue, notices that a certain calculation is producing a slightly wrong...
I'm creating the concept for a story called The Little Differences. It's about an accountant that, one day, out of the blue, notices that a certain calculation is producing a slightly wrong result. Barely noticeable, nothing world-changing,
He runs it on the computer, tries different software, a physical calculator... everything gives a result that's a little off. When he checks on paper himself, he gets the correct result. But, to his surprise, everyone else tells him that he's the one that's off, and that the incorrect result is actually perfectly sound.
I need something that makes sense, mathematically. The weird result must be something that really is wrong, and not just something that programs sometimes get wrong (I don't want it to be explained at all... I mean, the reason why it is occurring must not be something easily reducible to some well-known malfunction). But it must also be minor enough for someone to miss, something that wouldn't really cause much trouble in the real world (is that possible? IDK).
Lastly: it must be something that I'm able to explain (on some level) to a non-math reader.
So, Tildes math wizzes, what you suggest? :D
17 votes -
42 can be written as the sum of three cubes, which was the last remaining unsolved case under 100
17 votes -
Girls’ comparative advantage in reading can largely explain the gender gap in math-related fields
16 votes -
Knot theory: How the most useless branch of math could save your life
15 votes -
Mathematicians discover a more efficient way to multiply large numbers
15 votes -
Modern Arabic Mathematical Notation
15 votes -
Steffen's polyhedron is a flexible concave polyhedron. Euler thought such a shape was impossible. I also show infinitesimally flexible polyhedrons and bistable polyhedrons.
13 votes -
The unparalleled genius of John von Neumann
13 votes -
What is 0 to the power of 0?
13 votes -
Almost all polynomials are irreducible
13 votes -
Maths anxiety
12 votes -
The Fibonacci Matrix
12 votes -
I need cool facts about huge numbers
So, my 5-year-old nephew is obsessed with huge numbers, especially named numbers such as googol, duodecillion, and centillion. The other day I spent some time reciting these numbers to him, and...
So, my 5-year-old nephew is obsessed with huge numbers, especially named numbers such as googol, duodecillion, and centillion. The other day I spent some time reciting these numbers to him, and trying (and failing) to describe them. What I need are some cool facts about these numbers, such as "there are 1 quadrillion cat hairs in the world", or "there are not enough stars in the universe to fill one googol".
Besides math, his main interests are super-heroes and, apparently, cars.
I'm not a math or physics guy, so hopefully you guys can help me cheat :P
12 votes -
What is math? A teenager asked that age-old question on TikTok, creating a viral backlash, and then, a thoughtful scientific debate
12 votes -
Why do prime numbers make these spirals?
12 votes -
17 Klein Bottles become 1 - ft. Cliff Stoll and the glasswork of Lucas Clarke
12 votes -
Quaternions visualization by 3blue1brown - thinking in the fourth dimension
12 votes -
Bizarre traveling flame discovery
11 votes -
The oldest unsolved problem in math. Do odd perfect numbers exist?
11 votes -
Neutrinos lead to unexpected discovery in basic math
11 votes -
Against Set Theory (2005) [pdf]
11 votes -
This equation (the logistic map) will change how you see the world
11 votes -
Does Hollywood ruin books? - Numberphile
11 votes -
New Foundations is consistent - a difficult mathematical proof proved computationally using Lean
10 votes -
A brief history of tricky mathematical tiling
10 votes -
The humbling of the maths snobs
10 votes -
Squaring primes: Why all prime numbers >3 squared are one off a multiple of 24
10 votes -
The simplest math problem no one can solve
10 votes -
The universal geometry of geology
10 votes -
Real Numbers - Why? Why not computable numbers?
Do we have any mathematicians in the house? I've been wondering for a while why math is usually focused around real numbers instead of computable numbers - that is the set of numbers that you can...
Do we have any mathematicians in the house? I've been wondering for a while why math is usually focused around real numbers instead of computable numbers - that is the set of numbers that you can actually be computed to arbitrary, finite precision in finite time. Note that they necessarily include pi, e, sqrt(2) and every number you could ever compute. If you've seen it, it's computable.
What do we lose, beyond cantor's argument, by restricting math to computable numbers? By corollary of binary files and therefore algorithms being countable, the computable numbers are countable too, different from reals.
Bonus points if you can name a real, non-computable number. (My partner replied with "a number gained by randomly sampling decimal places ad infinitum" - a reply as cheeky as the question.) Also bonus points for naming further niceness properties we would get by restricting to computables.
I've read the wikipedia article on computable numbers and a bit beyond.
10 votes -
Pictures of Ultrametric Spaces, the p-adic Numbers, and Valued Fields
10 votes -
The network of collaboration among rappers and its community structure
9 votes