A new proof about prime numbers illuminates the subtle relationship between addition and multiplication — and raises hopes for progress on the famous abc conjecture. One morning last November, the ...

For thousands of years, philosophers have pondered cardinality: knowing “how many.” Using a series of crude estimates, the ancient Greek mathematician Archimedes worked out the approximate number of ...

Jeremiah Bartz owns shares in Nvidia. A shard of smooth bone etched with irregular marks dating back 20,000 years puzzled archaeologists until they noticed something unique – the etchings, lines like ...

Prime numbers are sometimes called math’s “atoms” because they can be divided by only themselves and 1. For two millennia, mathematicians have wondered if the prime numbers are truly random, or if ...

Here’s what you’ll learn when you read this story: The Busy Beaver number, or BB(n), represents a mathematical problem that tries to calculate the longest possible run-time of a Turing machine ...

Professor of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Maryland, Baltimore County Below is an edited excerpt from the book club discussion. You’re welcome to keep the conversation flowing by adding ...

More than 150 years ago, the economist and philosopher William Stanley Jevons discovered something curious about the number 4. While musing about how the mind conceives of numbers, he tossed a handful ...