Mathematics

Whether its filling the space between oranges in a box or squeezing molecules between cells, wasted storage space is a problem to which people, and especially companies, have been trying to find a solution for a long time. A recently published research might lead to dramatic improvements of storage capabilities and in the field of [...]

Prediction made by UCLA geographers Thomas Gillespie, John Agnew, and a whole class of undergrads regarding where Osama Bin Laden might be hiding turned out to be surprisingly accurate, surprising scientists and authorities alike. They created a probabilistic model which concluded that there is a 88.9% chance that he is hiding in a city less [...]

Various simulations of algorithms can be seen everywhere, especially in nature, but a recent project from the Sapientia University, Romania is definitely one of the most imaginative and novel initiatives of illustrating algorithms. The folks at Sapientia University demonstrate how different sorting algorithms work with numbered people dancing traditional Central European folk songs and arranging [...]

In case you don’t know, Futurama is a popular science fiction – I highly recommend it, as a matter of fact, but that’s more of a personal preference. What’s interesting about it is that a mathematical theory was created especially for it, or for an episode to be more exact. The theory refers to a [...]

Religion is nowadays an extremely touchy subject; if you ask religious people about non religious people there’s a good chance you will get a pretty nasty response, something involving a kind of hell and divine punishment, while if you ask the other group, probably some bad words will probably come up. If you ask me, [...]

Dr. Beverly Goodman of the Leon H. Charney School of Marine Sciences at the University of Haifa was doing some research on the ancient port and shipwrecks of the place, when she stumbled upon information that led her to this conclusion. “There is a likely chance of tsunami waves reaching the shores of Israel. Tsunami [...]

Don’t imagine a yellow, puffy golden chick doing complicated equations (as awesome as that would be) as it would be far from the truth. However, the scientific fact is very interesting in itself as the little birds are able to do some adding and subtracting, in an animal version, of course. The experiment used on [...]

The Aztecs were the dominant civilization in Mexico for several hundred years, when their “reign” was stopped by the Spanish in the early 1500s. An astonishing thing about them (among others) is the fact that they left behind really extensive mathematical writings, intriguing scholars ’til this day. Two manuscripts in particular have been object to [...]

Snowflakes have fascinated most of us since the beggining of time. They say that there are no two snowflakes alike and that isn’t very far away from the truth. No two snowflakes are truly alike, but they can be very similar to each other, said Janko Gravner, a mathematics professor at UC Davis. Now he [...]