Images of plants painted on pottery made up to 8,000 years ago may be the earliest example of humans’ mathematical thought, a ...
Breakthroughs in physics sometimes require an assist from the field of mathematics—and vice versa. In 1912, Albert Einstein, then a 33-year-old theoretical physicist at the Eidgenössische Technische ...
In his new book Creating Symmetry, Frank Farris uses ideas from advanced mathematics, such as complex analysis and abstract algebra, to transform snapshots of landscapes, flowers, or even his dinner ...
We are fond of saying things are symmetric, but what does that really mean? Intuitively we have a sense of symmetry as a kind of mirroring. Suppose we draw a vertical line through the middle of a ...
Author Mario Livio has studied the relationship between art and mathematics. He tells Michele Norris most of us are attracted to symmetry spiced by some elements of surprise... and that combo is the ...
This jingle has helped generations of algebra students recall the quadratic formula that solves every equation of the form $latex ax^2+bx+c=0$. The formula is as ...
There's a part of the brain that enables us to perceive magnitude -- we can compare loudness when hearing different tones or compare the number of dots in a group at a glance. Neuroscientists have ...