Math

The color of LED lights is controlled by a clumsy process. A new mathematical discovery may make it easier for us to get the hues we want.

It’s “a definitive study for all time, like writing the final book,” says one researcher who’s mapping out new classes of geometric structures.

The father of information theory built a machine to game roulette, then abandoned it.

A California housewife who in the 1970s discovered four new types of tessellating pentagons is dead at 94.

Big advances in math can happen when mathematicians move ideas into areas where they seem like they shouldn’t belong.

Science predicts only the predictable, ignoring most of our chaotic universe.

Paul Erdős placed small bounties on hundreds of unsolved math problems. Over the past 20 years, only a handful have been claimed.

Near-miss math provides exact representations of almost-right answers.

Juggling has advanced enormously in recent decades, thanks in part to the mathematical study of possible patterns.

Ramsey’s theorem predicts a surprising (and useful) consistency in the organization of graphs. Here’s a simple visual proof of how it works.

Physicists are attempting to map the distribution of the prime numbers to the energy levels of a particular quantum system.