Erica Klarreich

All Stories by Erica Klarreich

  1. Math

    Primal Progress: Pattern hunters spy order among prime numbers

    The population of prime numbers includes an infinite collection of arithmetic progressions.

  2. Math

    Math Lab

    Computers are starting to give mathematicians the lab instrument that they have been missing.

  3. Health & Medicine

    Quantum sentinels

    Quantum physics may soon help physicians track whether a cancer has spread.

  4. Math

    Toss Out the Toss-Up: Bias in heads-or-tails

    Coin tossing is inherently biased, with the coin more likely to land on the same face it started on.

  5. Math

    The calculus of love

    Mathematical equations can predict whether a couple will divorce.

  6. Math

    Computation’s New Leaf

    Plants in which large numbers of simple units interact with one another appear to compute how to coordinate the actions of their cells effectively.

  7. Math

    Bookish Math

    Statistical tests and computation can help solve literary mysteries surrounding the authorship of well-known works.

  8. Math

    Bookish Math

    Statistical tests and computation can help solve literary mysteries surrounding the authorship of well-known works.

  9. Math

    The Shape of Space

    The debate over the shape of space has taken some new twists with the analysis of satellite snapshots of the universe's temperature waves.

  10. Math

    Best Guess

    Economists are exploring the use of betting markets as tools for predicting the consequences of policy decisions by a government, corporation, or other institution.

  11. Faulty Memory: Long-term immunity isn’t always beneficial

    Quickly losing immune-system defenses against some viruses may protect humans from far nastier bugs, a mathematical model suggests.

  12. Math

    Infinite Wisdom

    A mathematician has proposed a new approach to resolve a long-standing question about infinite sets of numbers.