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.
Florence Nightingale, Data Visualization Visionary
The woman who revolutionized nursing was also a mathematician who knew the power of a visible representation of information.
The Quantum Random Number Generator
It’s real. And it will use quantum entanglement to generate true mathematical randomness. Here’s why that matters.
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.
The Math Behind the Perfect Free Throw
The fate of a free throw is set the instant the ball leaves the player’s fingertips.
What’s a Kilogram?
At the end of the nineteenth century, the kilogram was conceived as the mass of one liter of water at 4°C, the temperature at which water was densest.
The Quest for A Faster Marathon
How big a difference does air resistance make when running a marathon? Nike tried to find out recently. A look at the science behind the 2-hour marathon.
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.
How People Paid Their Taxes in Biblical Times
Think doing your taxes is annoying? Imagine trying it without a computer, a calculator… or even the Arabic numeral system.