math

The 25th Ig Nobel Awards Were The Greatest Moment In The History of (Silly) Science

For years, the Ig Nobel Awards have been famous for celebrating the most offbeat and ludicrous forms of scientific discovery. And last night, I was lucky enough to attend the 2015 Ig Nobel ceremony, because a friend was the proud winner of an Ig Nobel. This year was the 25th First Annual Ig Nobel Prize…

Tech News Diane Kelly Sep 18

Do Numbers Really Exist?

Here’s a nice, simple topic for first thing on a Friday morning: do numbers really exist? Well, do they? As Mark Jago from the University of Nottingham explains in this video, it’s really quite hard to find out about what numbers really, truly are because they’re not physical, tangible things. Prepare to have your mind…

Tech News Jamie Condliffe Sep 18

Why Trading In Your Old Car for a 2016 Prius Might Not Be the Best Investment

Photos of Toyota’s shiny new 2016 Prius leaked onto the Internet this week, supposedly boasting an estimated 60 MPG rating. But should you rush right out to reserve one of your very own? Not so fast. It all depends on the fuel efficiency of whatever you’re driving now. Full disclosure: I drive a 2007 Prius…

Tech News Jennifer Ouellette Sep 11

Can you solve this classic riddle about crossing a bridge?

Riddles can be fun but can also be really stressful when you start to feel your decently well-wrinkled brain shrivel into a prune. But hey! Tease the brain and the satisfaction of solving it outweighs the unnecessary stress added to your life, right? Right! Here’s the classic bridge riddle in animated form from Ted-Ed. How…

Sploid Casey Chan Sep 2

If It Weren’t for This Equation, You Wouldn’t Be Here

This is Shannon’s information theory, and it’s the equation that makes data compression possible. Without it, you wouldn’t be reading this article online right now. Shannon’s equation codifies exactly how much information a string of numbers or characters actually contains. It allowed Shannon — and, later, software engineers — to develop new ways to compress…

Tech News Jamie Condliffe Aug 3

These Mathematical Scarves Are Designed By a Computer Algorithm

It’s still summer, but these mathematical merino scarves designed with a computer algorithm are getting us in the mood for colder temps. And making us wonder if we need to improve our coding skills. They’re called KnitYak: black-and-white merino scarves that each have a snowflake-unique design that’s generated by a computer algorithm. The woman behind…

Tech News Bryan Lufkin Jul 22

How Math Helped Design Your Mouse Pointer

You might think that your mouse pointer, and the rest of your computer’s user interface for that matter, was designed with a bucket load of human intuition and large dollop of design savvy. You’d be right, of course — but there was also a healthy amount of math involved in the process. In this video,…

Tech News Jamie Condliffe Jul 13

How to Bake Pi Uses Math to Solve the Cookbook Paradox

There is a lie running through your cookbooks. No, it’s not that you can substitute crackers for apples in your pie and no one will know the difference (though, come on, let’s be decent to each other, folks: Knock that off.) The lie goes much deeper than all that, and is the source of what…

io9 Ria Misra Jul 10

This Is What Happens When You Remix Calvin and Hobbes Using Math

What happens when you take one of the world’s best cartoon strips and remix it with some random process math? Wonderful gibberish is what. Josh Millard has used aMarkov chain process to remix Calvin and Hobbes strips into a glorious mess. Markov chains are a random mathematical system where the next step depends only what…

Books & Comics Jamie Condliffe Jul 8

Don’t Freak Out if You Can’t Solve a Math Problem That’s Gone Viral

A number of math problems have recently garnered considerable attention, but the inability to solve these problems quickly is not indicative of a person’s overall math skill, nor should it prompt a crisis of confidence about the state of American math aptitude. It’s been quite a year for mathematics problems on the internet. In the…

io9 Kevin Knudson — The Conversation Jun 29

An Awesome Modern Take on the Statistical Atlas of the United States

The Statistical Atlas of the United States is a treasure trove for data lovers produced by the Census Bureau—but the last one to made dates back all the way to 2000. So Nathan Yau decided to make his own, using just publicly available data. It’s amazing. “With more data than ever, it seems like there…

Tech News Jamie Condliffe Jun 19

These Math Secrets Will Make You Love Times Tables

Most people will probably remember the times tables from primary school quizzes. There might be patterns in some of them (the simple doubling of the 2 times table) but others you just learnt by rote. And it was never quite clear just why it was necessary to know what 7 x 9 is off the…

Tech News Anita Ponsaing Jun 11

Every Satellite Got Into Space Thanks to Newton’s Law of Gravitation

What goes up must come down — though not always in the way you’d expect. This is Newton’s Universal Law of Gravitation, and you can thank it for GPS, Google Earth and even the pictures beamed back from the other side of the Solar System. Here’s why. The equation neatly describes the gravitational attraction that…

Physics & Chemistry Jamie Condliffe Jun 10

Presidential Candidate Lincoln Chafee Wants the U.S. to Go Metric

Lincoln Chafee has launched Democratic presidential bid with at least one interesting proposal: he wants the U.S. to go metric. Speaking to CNN’s Wolf Blitzer he outlined a series of plans to make America “internationalist as a country.” He explained: “Let’s be bold — let’s join the rest of the world and go metric… This…

Tech News Jamie Condliffe Jun 5

Scientists Are Turning Their Backs on Algorithms Inspired By Nature

While computers are poor at creativity, they are adept at crunching through vast numbers of solutions to modern problems where there are numerous complex variables at play. Take the question of finding the best delivery plan for a distribution company – where best to begin? How many vehicles? Which stretches of road need to be…

Tech News Alexander Brownlee and John Woodward Jun 3

How A Tea Party Turned Into A Scientific Legend

When pouring tea, do you add the tea first or the milk first? If you think it can’t possibly matter, you’re unfortunately wrong — as Dr. Ronald Fisher proved at an innocuous tea party where he conducted an experiment that changed statistical science forever. The Tea Party Our story took place in the 1920s, in…

io9 Esther Inglis-Arkell May 25

Can You Solve This Vietnamese Math Puzzle for 8-Year-Olds?

If you thought the Singaporean logic puzzle was tough, brace yourself for this math problem that was originally set for eight-year-old students in the Vietnamese town of Bao Loc. It’s apparently even stumped someone with a doctorate in economics with mathematics. As Alex Bellos points out on The Guardian , it’s not a theoretically difficult…

Tech News Jamie Condliffe May 20

Singapore’s Prime Minister Has Published His Own C++ Sudoku Solver

Everyone needs a hobby. For Lee Hsien Loon, that happens to be writing C++ Sudoku solvers and publishing them on the Internet. Lee Hsien Loong also happens to be the Prime Minister of Singapore. His pastime came to light during a speech he gave last month to a group of technology industry leaders. Then, he…

Tech News Jamie Condliffe May 5

The Mathematical Formulae That Will Help You Get Dates

In a charming TEDx talk at Binghamton University last year, complexity expert Hannah Fry applies her math skills to romantic relationships. Watch as she explains how pattern theory may help you get dates, how to use optimal stopping theory to pick a spouse, and how an understanding of negativity thresholds can help your marriage succeed.…

Tech News Diane Kelly May 1

Rebuilding Cambridge University’s First Computer

In 1946, scientists at Cambridge University built the institution’s first ever computer—the Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator. One of the first to be used to solve real scientific problems, it was scrapped to make way for its successor. Now, it’s being rebuilt. During its lifetime it gained the ability to perform some pretty complex operations—-dealing…

Tech News Jamie Condliffe Apr 30

The 25th Ig Nobel Awards Were The Greatest Moment In The History of (Silly) Science

Do Numbers Really Exist?

Why Trading In Your Old Car for a 2016 Prius Might Not Be the Best Investment

Can you solve this classic riddle about crossing a bridge?

If It Weren’t for This Equation, You Wouldn’t Be Here

These Mathematical Scarves Are Designed By a Computer Algorithm

How Math Helped Design Your Mouse Pointer

How to Bake Pi Uses Math to Solve the Cookbook Paradox

This Is What Happens When You Remix Calvin and Hobbes Using Math

Don’t Freak Out if You Can’t Solve a Math Problem That’s Gone Viral

An Awesome Modern Take on the Statistical Atlas of the United States

These Math Secrets Will Make You Love Times Tables

Every Satellite Got Into Space Thanks to Newton’s Law of Gravitation

Presidential Candidate Lincoln Chafee Wants the U.S. to Go Metric

Scientists Are Turning Their Backs on Algorithms Inspired By Nature

How A Tea Party Turned Into A Scientific Legend

Can You Solve This Vietnamese Math Puzzle for 8-Year-Olds?

Singapore’s Prime Minister Has Published His Own C++ Sudoku Solver

The Mathematical Formulae That Will Help You Get Dates

Rebuilding Cambridge University’s First Computer

Someone Finally Took a Good iPhone Photo of the Moon. Good Luck Copying Their Trick

In Letter, OpenAI Reportedly Says Elon Musk and Meta Are Coordinating ‘Attacks’ Against It

Artemis 2 Day 6: Follow the Mission With Our Live Updates 🔴

Anonymous Sources Detail Sam Altman’s Alleged Untrustworthiness in New Report

Steven Spielberg Still Wants to Make a Horror Film ‘Someday’

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The Best Anti-Meta Smart Glasses Are About to Have Tough Competition

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