Mathematical patterns reveal profound truths about the universe and, surprisingly, about our inner lives as well. These five visual math concepts offer unique frameworks for understanding our behavior ...

If you buy something using links in our stories, we may earn a commission. Learn more. A few minutes into a 2018 talk at the University of Michigan, Ian Tobasco picked up a large piece of paper and ...

In 1999, while sitting at a bus stop in Cuernavaca, Mexico, a Czech physicist named Petr Šeba noticed young men handing slips of paper to the bus drivers in exchange for cash. It wasn’t organized ...

Remember the graph paper you used at school, the kind that’s covered with tiny squares? It’s the perfect illustration of what mathematicians call a “periodic tiling of space”, with shapes covering an ...

Frank A. Farris does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond ...

“Why bring together two fields that seem to many people so very disparate" What could mathematics and poetry share, except that the mention of either one is sometimes enough to bring an uneasy chill ...

During family dinner, we have a tradition. Everyone has to summarize their day by describing three good events and, if necessary, one bad event. When my turn arrived at a recent dinner, I turned to my ...

"I was a landscape architect who turned to a life of crime," jokes Robert Cheetham, founder of Azavea, a software development and research firm based in Philadelphia. Fourteen years ago, he was one of ...

The first few years of school weren’t easy for RuoHan Chen. He had emigrated from China at age 4, just a few years before starting kindergarten. The language and culture were still new to him, which ...

Pattern formation in physical, biological, and sociological systems has been studied for many years. One area where it has been of growing interest is in crime modeling. Pattern formation in physical, ...