Mathematics

The most startling thing to me about the election of 2012 was how spookily accurate polls were.  Social scientists in one camp want to dismiss determinism while the other camp has biology-envy…

Nate Silver, a sports statistician, made waves when he accurately projected the results of the presidential election in 2008.  So a few days go when he predicted that President Obama was 75%…

The link between mathematics and music has always been there - our ears hear in frequencies and even before those frequencies were known in physics terms, ancient philosopher-scientists had…

In a pinch and need to go back in time or flee to Alpha Centauri in a hurry?  Find a mathematician, quick! If only Einstein's theory of special relativity were extended to work beyond the speed…

Leaves store carbon. In the spring, leaves soak up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, converting the gas into organic carbon compounds, and then in the autumn, trees shed those leaves, which…

Biologists of the coming decade are going to need to know a whole lot of physics, math and statistics. Everyone is going to need to do more math, really. The days when it was just a language science…

A team of Portuguese researchers have developed amathematical tool that can classify any region in the world according to itspattern of development into one of 5 types - each with specific…

A version of this article with less scientific details (so easier to read) can be found here. A team of Portuguese researchers have developed a mathematical tool that can classify any region in the…

Physicists doing economics has gotten a bad rap - a practically worldwide recession will do that - but it's no reason to give up, especially if you are of the world view that redistributing wealth is…

If you want to understand the larger spatial patterns and timing of drought in the arid and semiarid areas of the American West, you will need to look at tree ring and oxygen isotope data. Estimates…