What Makes for 'Good' Math?

<p>Birds are not merely descendants of dinosaurs — they are dinosaurs. For Yale evolutionary biologist and ornithologist Richard Prum, birds have been a lifelong passion and a window into some of evolution’s most intriguing mysteries.</p> <p>In a wide-ranging conversation with co ... Show More

<p>Every time data travels — from smartphones to the cloud, or across the vacuum of space — it relies on a silent but vigilant guardian in the form of error-correcting codes. These codes, baked into nearly every digital system, are designed to detect and repair any errors that no ... Show More

<p>Most cosmologists agree that our universe had a beginning. But the finer details about the Big Bang remain a mystery. A history of everything would explain all, or so theoretical physicists hoped. In his final years, Stephen Hawking working with Thomas Hertog proposed a striki ... Show More

Mathematics as a subject is distinctive in its symbolic abstraction and its potential for logical and computational rigor. But mathematicians tend to impute other qualities to our subject that set it apart, such as impartiality, universality, and elegance. Far from incidental, th ... Show More

This ten part history of mathematics from Newton to the present day, reveals the personalities behind the calculations: the passions and rivalries of mathematicians struggling to get their ideas heard. Professor Marcus du Sautoy shows how these masters of abstraction find a role ... Show More

Nothing annoys Eugenia Cheng more than the suggestion that there is no creativity in mathematics. Doing mathematics is not about being a human calculator, she says. She doesn't spend her time multiplying big numbers in her head. She sits in hotel bars drawing (mainly arrows) with ... Show More

<p>Faced with one cake and eight hungry people, it’s pretty obvious how maths underpins reality. But as mathematics gets further from common sense and into seemingly abstract territory, nature still seems to obey its rules - whether in the orbit of a planet, the number of petals ... Show More

Melvyn Bragg and guests John Barrow, Colva Roney-Dougal and Marcus du Sautoy explore the unintended consequences of mathematical discoveries, from the computer to online encryption, to alternating current and predicting the path of asteroids.In his book The Mathematician's Apolog ... Show More

Alfred S. Posamentier's Math Tricks: The Surprising Wonders of Shapes and Numbers (Prometheus Books, 2021) has a lovely assortment of puzzles from all areas of mathematics. Some will be familiar to many readers, but there are plenty of ones I’d never seen before – and I’ve seen l ... Show More

🎙️  Hello, bienvenue sur Maths en tête, le podcast de vulgarisation mathématique pour tous.  Ça y est, c’est la rentrée des classes. Et aujourd’hui, j’accueille dans cet épisode un élève particulièrement Waooh !, mon ami Manu Houdart de Very Math Trip.   Interview. Site Very Mat ... Show More

Marcus du Sautoy argues that mathematics is the driving force behind modern science: German mathematician, Carl Friedrich Gaus.This ten part history of mathematics from Newton to the present day, reveals the personalities behind the calculations: the passions and rivalries of mat ... Show More

Marcus du Sautoy argues that mathematics is the driving force behind modern science: mathematics during the French Revolution. This ten part history of mathematics from Newton to the present day, reveals the personalities behind the calculations: the passions and rivalries of mat ... Show More