Math

  1. Math

    A building of bubbles

    Math Trek: The National Aquatics Center in Beijing, newly built for the Olympics, is a glowing cube of bubbles. The mathematics behind it are built around Lord Kelvin's tetrakaidecahedra and the physics of foam.

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  2. Math

    The Drunkard’s Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives

    Leonard Mlodinow, Pantheon Books, 2008, 272 p., $24.95.

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  3. Math

    Scooping the political pollsters

    Who will win the election in November? A technique from baseball stats may predict the answer.

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  4. Math

    Strategy to stop a pandemic

    A limited supply of vaccine shots, if targeted well, could stop the spread of disease.

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  5. Math

    Optimizing leafy networks

    Scientists reveal a mathematical principle underlying the arrangement of leaf veins in plant species.

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  6. Math

    The tell-tale anecdote

    An Edgar Allan Poe story reveals a flaw in game theory.

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  7. Astronomy

    Accidental astrophysicists

    MATH TREK: The mathematicians thought they'd just extended a fundamental result in algebra, but it turns out that they'd also proven a conjecture in astrophysics.

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  8. Physics

    Life’s code in soap

    The mathematics of soapy water yields some clues to the origin of the genetic code.

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  9. Math

    Gender equality closes math gap

    Research shows that the greater the gender equality in a country, the more equal the math scores between boys and girls.

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  10. Math

    Communities of Communities of …

    A new approach to network theory focusing on the subcommunities within networks may shed light on everything from food webs to terrorist cells. It may even act as an oracle, helping scientists identify connections within a network they haven’t yet seen.

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  11. Math

    Detangling DNA

    DNA can form some very nasty knots — but not just any knots.

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  12. Math

    The squint method of data analysis

    Mathematicians discover a Klein bottle hidden within the data underlying photographs

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