Mathematics

Consistent with the Standard Model of particle physics, there is postulated a Higgs field which determines those particles which are massive and those which are not. Photons are massless. Gluons also…

In team sports it is often difficult to determine the value of an individual.   Some sports can do it easily enough, like baseball(1) or basketball, but during the World Cup, casual fans who…

How geeky do you have to be to attend a mathematical meeting every 4 years - and think India in August is a cool place to do it?   Pretty geeky.   The ultimate geeks. If that is you, we…

Rock-paper-scissors, RPS. Who hasn't played it as a child? The game, known by a variety of names such as Rochambeau, Jan-ken and Kauw-bauwi-bo, is played all over the world. The rules are…

I'm not a Russell fan so his followers will have different opinions. One particular quirk of symbolic logic is the reason for this column. First it should be said that symbolic logic owes a great…

While going through old boxes of miscellaneous detritus, I came upon several sheets of paper from my health journalism grad school days. The scribes packed a lot of wisdom into those articles and…

Martin Gardner died yesterday. His memory will live on through some 70+ books and, above all, through his column "MATHEMATICAL GAMES" in Scientific American. During the 25 years that Gardner's column…

The safe deposit in front of you is wide open. Twenty stacks of one-hundred dollar bills stare you in the face. Each stack a hundred bills thick. So many Benjamins. All for Jude, the other remaining…

One of the disappointments experienced by most mathematics students is that they never get a course in mathematics. They get courses in calculus, algebra, topology, and so on, but the division of…

As we’ve just had income tax time in the U.S., I’ve been hearing a bunch of silliness associated with it. I thought I’d talk about two of my favourite (well, for some value of “favourite”) tax…