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Science News
November 3, 2001
Ivars Peterson |
Absolutely Abnormal Identifying the normal (or even the abnormal) in mathematics can pose serious difficulties...   |
Science News
March 1, 2003
Ivars Peterson |
Cracking Fermat Numbers Fermat numbers have what mathematicians sometimes describe as a "beautiful mathematical form," involving powers of 2. They were of interest 400 years ago and are now the subject of a wide-ranging worldwide computer search. |
Science News
May 3, 2003
Ivars Peterson |
A Geometric Superformula The notion of a simple equation that you can use to generate a wide variety of geometric shapes is an immensely appealing one. Johan Gielis of Antwerp, Belgium, proposes one such formula in the March American Journal of Botany. |
Science News
June 1, 2002
Ivars Peterson |
Setting Records Randomly Athletic record-breaking occurs in such small increments that chance factors loom large. Mathematicians and statisticians have sought recently to learn more about the role of randomness in records... |
Science News
May 4, 2002
Ivars Peterson |
Prime Spirals There is truly not only mystery but also beauty in the distribution of prime numbers... |
Science News
September 6, 2003
Ivars Peterson |
Pennant Races and Magic Numbers It's getting close to the end of the regular baseball season. Fanatic fans track not only which team is in first place or in position for a wild-card berth in the playoffs but also the number of games a team must win to avoid elimination. The calculation of a "magic" number is interesting. |
Science News
September 17, 2005
Ivars Peterson |
A Mathemusical Potpourri Are you curious about the sound of pi? What sort of tune is the Dow Jones Industrial Average singing today? How does redwood DNA translate into an environmental symphony? A new computer program and Web site allows you to find out. |
Science News
April 19, 2003
Ivars Peterson |
The Colors of an Equation's Roots A few artists have taken advantage of the techniques used to visualize mathematics to create aesthetically pleasing patterns and intriguing artworks. |
Science News
October 4, 2003
Ivars Peterson |
A Magic Knight's Tour For as long as chessboards have existed, there have been puzzles involving chessboards and chess pieces. Some of the most enduring conundrums involve knights. |
Science News
September 20, 2003
Ivars Peterson |
Rolling with Reuleaux Amazingly, the circle isn't the only shape that would work safely as a manhole cover. In fact, any shape of constant width would do, and there are infinitely many such shapes. The simplest example is the Reuleaux triangle, named after distinguished mechanical engineer Franz Reuleaux. |
Science News
August 27, 2005
Ivars Peterson |
Primes, Palindromes, and Pyramids Many questions about palidromic prime pyramids remain open. Is there a better way than exhaustive search for finding the tallest pyramids with fixed step sizes? Can you prove that fixed step size pyramids are finite? |
Science News
January 25, 2003
Ivars Peterson |
Chemical Dissections In recreational mathematics, a geometric dissection involves cutting a geometric figure into pieces that you can reassemble into another figure. Now, chemists have gotten into the dissection game, as a novel strategy for getting small objects to assemble themselves into different regular forms. |
Science News
April 26, 2003
Ivars Peterson |
Recycling Topology On the topology of an interesting form: the recycling symbol |
Science News
April 5, 2003
Ivars Peterson |
Fractured Granite and Fractal Prints A fractured edge of granite tends to show the same degree of roughness at different magnifications. Indeed, nature features many irregular shapes that are self-similar -- that repeat themselves on different scales within the same object. |
Science News
December 8, 2001
Ivars Peterson |
The Math Hatter and More Looking for a cool gift for someone mathematically inclined? An unusual, conversation-generating token of appreciation? The World Wide Web offers a number of intriguing possibilities -- if you know where to stop and shop... |
Science News
November 30, 2002
Ivars Peterson |
Fold-and-Cut Magic Accordion folds and judicious cutting can produce a string of paper dolls or a variety of geometric patterns. This activity also suggests a mathematical question. |
Science News
March 4, 2006
Ivars Peterson |
The Limits of Mathematics No matter what the system of axioms or rules is, there will always be some assertion that can be neither proved nor invalidated within the system. |
Science News
June 29, 2002
Ivars Peterson |
Dangerous Problems Some mathematical problems are easy to describe but turn out to be notoriously difficult to solve. Nonetheless, despite repeated warnings from those who have failed in the past, these unsolved problems continue to lure mathematicians into hours, days, and even years of futile labor. |
Science News
November 24, 2001
Ivars Peterson |
Canary Songs Simply by manipulating air pressure and muscle tension in its vocal organ, or syrinx, a canary can generate an amazingly varied repertoire of trills, warbles, and other melodic syllables. This insight comes from a novel mathematical model of sound production in songbirds... |
Science News
December 14, 2002
Ivars Peterson |
A Trillion Pieces of Pi Computer scientist Yasumasa Kanada and his coworkers at the University of Tokyo Information Technology Center have now succeeded in computing 1,241,100,000,000 decimal digits of pi, smashing their own previous world record of 206,158,430,000 digits, set in 1999. |
Science News
August 16, 2003
Ivars Peterson |
Golf Clubs and Driving Distance The last 20 years have seen remarkable changes in golf equipment: metal-headed drivers, forgiving irons, new putter variants, juiced golf balls, and more. Have these technology changes led to improved performance? |
Science News
February 14, 2004
Ivars Peterson |
Hunting e E has been called the logarithmic constant, Napier's number, Euler's constant, and the natural logarithmic base. This article describes how it can be calculated. |
Science News
July 14, 2001
Ivars Peterson |
Pursuing Pursuit Curves A pursuit curve is the path an object takes when chasing another object. Such a path might result from a fox pursuing a rabbit or a missile seeking a moving target. Plotting pursuit curves can produce fascinating patterns... |
Science News
September 8, 2001
Ivars Peterson |
Waves of Congestion From a physicist's point of view, traffic flow can be regarded as a "many-body system of strongly interacting bodies." Various studies have revealed that such systems can show wavelike behavior and abrupt transitions from one state to another... |
Science News
September 24, 2005 |
Math Music An interactive Web site, developed at Eastern Washington University, provides variety of tools for composing music based on mathematical recipes that convert sequences of numbers -- such as pi, or Fibonacci numbers -- into sounds. |
Science News
August 25, 2001
Ivars Peterson |
Mozart's Melody Machine A mathematical game that composes a practically infinite number of Mozartean minuets from random-number generation... |
Science News
January 11, 2003
Ivars Peterson |
A Remarkable Dearth of Primes The pursuit of prime numbers -- integers evenly divisible only by themselves and 1 -- can lead to all sorts of curious results and unexpected patterns. In some instances, you may even encounter a mysterious absence of primes. |
PC Magazine
November 16, 2004
Don Labriola |
Sound Tricks Create sound tracks worthy of your soon-to-be-award-winning film. a Musical Generator... Band-in-a-Box 2004 Pro... Jammer Professional 5... Movie Maestro... |
Science News
July 29, 2006
Ivars Peterson |
Names for Numbers Recreational mathematics offers a vast playing field for amateur and professional mathematicians alike. Named numbers, such as Smiths, have all sorts of intriguing properties. |
Science News
July 7, 2001
Ivars Peterson |
Acoustic Residues There's a surprising mathematical ingredient in the sound of many performing artists and recording stars. It manifests itself in the form of clusters of panels hanging on the walls of recording studios, concert halls, nightclubs, and other venues... |
Science News
July 21, 2001
Ivars Peterson |
Art of Pursuit The simple mathematical concept of a pursuit curve can serve as the starting point for creating wonderfully intricate artistic designs... |
Science News
May 6, 2006
Ivars Peterson |
Quilting Pi The intriguing, enigmatic number pi, the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter, conjures up vivid patterns that artist and mathematician John Sims translates to quilts. |
Science News
June 8, 2002
Ivars Peterson |
Fractal Roots and Artful Math The MathArt/ArtMath exhibition showcases mathematical art. |
Science News
May 21, 2005
Ivars Peterson |
Divisibility by Seven Over the years, people have come up with dozens of algorithms for divisibility by 7. Here is the latest entry that is fast and efficient for determining if large numbers are divisible by 7. |
Science News
November 15, 2003
Ivars Peterson |
Cool Rationals One of my more distinct recollections of math class involves the decimal representation of rational numbers and the discovery of wonderful patterns among those digits. A new paper finds fascinating new patterns and provides some numerological explanations. |
Popular Mechanics
November 19, 2008
Kate Schweitzer |
Fringe's Music to Math Connection Contains as Much Fact as Fiction Is there really a connection between mathematics and music? |
Science News
October 9, 2004
Ivars Peterson |
Randomness, Risk, and Financial Markets Approximate entropy, a novel measure used to determine the irregularity of a sequence of numbers, can be applied to stock market performance... Puzzle of the Week... |
Science News
April 14, 2007
Julie J. Rehmeyer |
Euler's Beautiful Equation Leonhard Euler, one of the greatest mathematicians of all time, was born 300 years ago on April 15, 1707. He discovered the equation e ip = -1. |
