Mathematics

Statistical Mechanics Reveals The Ideal Hideout During A Zombie Takeover

Researchers focusing on a new way to discuss statistical mechanics have modeled "World War Z", an oral history of the first zombie war, to explore how an "actual" zombie outbreak might play out in the U.S.   ...

Article - News Staff - Feb 27 2015 - 11:22am

The Science Of Randomness, One Penny At A Time

The concept of randomness has intrigued great minds for as long as history of great thinkers has been recorded.  From the nature of wind to drunks running into lampposts on their way home, scholars have been intrigued with making random predictable.  A gro ...

Article - News Staff - Mar 4 2015 - 10:29am

Goodbye P Value: It's Time To Let Go Of One Of Science's Most Misused Measures

How should scientists interpret their data? Emerging from their labs after days, weeks, months, even years spent measuring and recording, how do researchers draw conclusions about the results of their experiments? ...

Article - The Conversation - Mar 10 2015 - 11:44am

March Madness: Can Basketball Experts Outperform A Coin Flip?

It's that time of year- the NCAA tournament, called "March Madness", when office pools all across the United States have people researching teams and reading predictions to try and optimize their chances of winning money by predicting basket ...

Article - News Staff - Mar 10 2015 - 4:24pm

Game Theory May Show Why We Cooperate

Why do people cooperate? This isn’t a question anyone seriously asks. The answer is obvious: we cooperate because doing so is usually synergistic. It creates more benefit for less cost and makes our lives easier and better. Maybe it’s better to ask why do ...

Article - The Conversation - Mar 11 2015 - 6:10pm

This Pi Day Is A Once In A Century Celebration

Pi Day – on March 14th – will be particularly memorable this year: the date can be written 3/14 by those who opt for the month then day format, which is Pi to two decimal places, 3.14. If you include the year this year then that gives 3/14/15, which is Pi ...

Article - The Conversation - Mar 13 2015 - 8:00am

The Mystery Of Fairy Circles In The Namibian Desert- And Why They Look Like Skin Cells

Many people have heard of the Golden Ratio, a ratio that is the midpoint between asymmetry and symmetry- when "the whole is to the larger as the larger is to the smaller". In numerical terms, it is 1.618.  ...

Article - News Staff - Apr 7 2015 - 9:51am

Understanding Wrinkles Begins With Math

By Peter Gwynne, Inside Science – From raisins to fingerprints, and from tree bark to the surface of the brain, wrinkles appear throughout nature. But scientists have struggled to explain how wrinkles form. Now two independent research teams at the Massac ...

Article - Peter Gwynne - Jun 7 2015 - 2:12am

Science 2.0: Quantum Theory Makes Big Data Manageable

One cornerstone of the Science 2.0 approach is the framework for making Big Data manageable. In fields from physics to biology, it's no longer a question of obtaining data, but managing it in ways that are relevant. It's been problematic in scie ...

Article - News Staff - Apr 23 2015 - 8:35am

Are We Living In A Hologram? Is The Universe A 2-D Projection On The Cosmic Horizon?

There is not the slightest doubt that the the universe is real. It is three-dimensional. But one popular alternative notion has been the "holographic principle", which asserts that a mathematical description of the universe only requires two dim ...

Article - News Staff - May 2 2015 - 3:11pm