Math
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Health & Medicine
Evidence-based medicine actually isn’t
Demands for evidence-based medicine confront the contradiction that much of the evidence is worthless or skewed.
- Science & Society
Top 10 mathematical innovations
Nine mathematical innovations that rank right up there with logarithms.
- Math
Father-son mathematicians fold math into fonts
MIT’s Erik and Martin Demaine create puzzle typefaces to test new ideas.
- Math
Scientists’ grasp of confidence intervals doesn’t inspire confidence
Confidence intervals are often misrepresented and are commonly misunderstood, even by researchers.
- Math
If the world is a computer, life is an algorithm
Cellular automata may offer the algorithmic power to mimic the laws of physics and the evolution of life.
- Math
National Museum of Mathematics is antidote to math phobia
New York's National Museum of Mathematics offers a physical, tactile, even rambunctious presentation of math.
- Math
The Improbability Principle
The laws of mathematics and physics suffice to explain a world of coincidences, statistician David J. Hand argues.
- Math
Doctors flunk quiz on screening-test math
Many doctors, and the news media, don’t understand that because of the statistics of screening tests, a test with 90 percent accuracy can give a wrong diagnosis more than 90 percent of the time.
- Math
Our Mathematical Universe
Math is everywhere: medicine, sports, banking, gambling, National Security Agency espionage.
- Math
Goldberg variations: New shapes for molecular cages
Scientists have figured a way to iron out the wrinkles in a large class of molecular cages.
- Math
There’s something suspicious about using statistics to test statistics
The use of statistics to validate medical studies suffers from flaws of faulty assumptions.
- Math
To make science better, watch out for statistical flaws
Study denying that most medical research papers are wrong may turn out to be wrong.
