Math
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Math
The Drunkard’s Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives
Leonard Mlodinow, Pantheon Books, 2008, 272 p., $24.95.
- Math
Scooping the political pollsters
Who will win the election in November? A technique from baseball stats may predict the answer.
- Math
Strategy to stop a pandemic
A limited supply of vaccine shots, if targeted well, could stop the spread of disease.
- Math
Optimizing leafy networks
Scientists reveal a mathematical principle underlying the arrangement of leaf veins in plant species.
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- 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.
- Physics
Life’s code in soap
The mathematics of soapy water yields some clues to the origin of the genetic code.
- 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.
- 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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- Math
The squint method of data analysis
Mathematicians discover a Klein bottle hidden within the data underlying photographs
- Math
BOOK LIST | Guesstimation: Solving the World’s Problems on the Back of a Cocktail Napkin
Learn to use simple arithmetic to approximate anything. Princeton Univ. Press, 2008, 300 p. $19.95 GUESSTIMATION
