mathematics
Impossible Cookware and Other Triumphs of the Penrose Tile
Infinite patterns that never repeat have moved from fantasy to reality.
Math’s Beautiful Monsters
How a destructive idea paved the way for modern math.
Best of 2013: The Man Who Invented Modern Probability
Chance encounters in the life of Andrei Kolmogorov.
The Math Trick Behind MP3s, JPEGs, and Homer Simpson’s Face
Nine years ago, I was sitting in a college math physics course and my professor spelt out an idea that kind of blew my mind. I think it isn’t a stretch to say that this is one of the most widely applicable mathematical discoveries, with applications ranging from optics to quantum physics, radio astronomy, MP3 […]
Purest of the Purists: The Puzzling Case of Grigori Perelman
Grigori Perelman became famous, despite his adamant opposition, for proving a conjecture from Henri Poincaré, pictured here. In November 2002, a Russian mathematician named Grigori Perelman posted the first of three short preprints to the arXiv (an online repository for drafts of academic papers in math and science), offering a proof for the famous Poincare […]
