Is there an infinity of infinities? The question sounds almost absurd, like a child’s riddle meant to twist your brain into ...

Mathematicians have illuminated what sets of points can look like if the distances between them are all whole numbers. The change of plans came on a road trip. On a beautiful day last April, the ...

Mathematics is traditionally a solitary science. In 1986 Andrew Wiles withdrew to his study for seven years to prove Fermat’s theorem. The resulting proofs are often difficult for colleagues to ...

What makes a proof stronger than a guess? What does evidence look like in the realm of mathematical abstraction? Hear the mathematician Melanie Matchett Wood explain how probability helps to guide ...

A glance at the November issue of Notices of the American Mathematical Society: What do mathematicians do? Mathematicians often have difficulty describing what they do in a way that is accessible to ...

Mathematicians explore ideas by proposing conjectures and proving them with theorems. For centuries, they built these proofs line by careful line, and most math researchers still work like that today.

All equals are not created equal—mathematicians sometimes play fast and loose. In programming, equal signs mean different things, and variables have different types. Turning intuitive math expertise ...

When you look at your surrounding environment, it might seem like you’re living on a flat plane. After all, this is why you ...

Ariel Procaccia has thought a lot about how to cut cake over the last 15 years. That’s partly because the Harvard computer scientist has three children who among them have celebrated more than two ...