Doing Math with Intellectual Humility

Math class is an opportunity to teach students both how to use conjecture to arrive at knowledge and how to learn from the logic of peers.
Photo taken in the Bourbaki Congress of 1938 in Dieulefit

The Mathematical Pranksters behind Nicolas Bourbaki

Bourbaki was gnomic and mythical, impossible to pin down; his mathematics just the opposite: unified, unambiguous, free of human idiosyncrasy.
Karate chop

The Physics of Karate

A human hand has the power to split wooden planks and demolish concrete blocks. A trio of physicists investigated why this feat doesn't shatter our bones.
"Diagram of the causes of mortality in the army in the East" by Florence Nightingale, 1858

Florence Nightingale, Data Visualization Visionary

The woman who revolutionized nursing was also a mathematician who knew the power of a visible representation of information.
J. Ernest Wilkins Jr.

The Black Mathematician Who Resisted Nuclear War

J. Ernest Wilkins Jr. worked on the Manhattan Project and signed a petition that the bomb not be used before Japan was offered terms of surrender.
The number 2

The Quantum Random Number Generator

It’s real. And it will use quantum entanglement to generate true mathematical randomness. Here’s why that matters.
A model showing the layers of Earth

The Woman Who Found the Earth’s Inner Core

Inge Lehmann was the seismologist and mathematician who figured out what the Earth's core was actually made of.
NCAA free throw math

The Math Behind the Perfect Free Throw

The fate of a free throw is set the instant the ball leaves the player’s fingertips.
Cube dice

The Ancient Origins of Dice

Gambling is one of humankind’s oldest activities. Elaborate technologies and customs have emerged around games of chance. Dice in particular have drawn attention from scholars.
Heads quarters

The Statistics of Coin Tosses for Theater Geeks

At the beginning of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, a coin toss lands as heads 92 times in a row, the odds of which are a mere 1 in 5 octillion.