Latest

• ######### Contributor Article Content #########
  ######### Card Contributor Article #########

  Mathematics The Game of Life [long_description] The late John Horton Conway had a gift for making complicated mathematics appear simple. One piece of his work helped to solve the major problem of group theory and led mathematicians to realize that if something holds for all simple groups, it has to be true for all groups. He also contributed the concept of surreal numbers and invented popular puzzles such as the Game of Life.

  ---

  
  
• ######### Contributor Article Content #########
  ######### Card Contributor Article #########

  Mathematics Points and Lines [long_description] In Forbidden Configurations in Discrete Geometry, David Eppstein examines a number of seemingly simple problems in plain geometry concerning finite sets of points and lines in the plane. Although most of these problems should prove relatively easy to grasp for the uninitiated, general solutions to these problems are not known. The book will serve both budding mathematicians and curious amateurs.

  ---

  
  
• ######### Contributor Article Content #########
  ######### Card Contributor Article #########

  Mathematics Only Connect [long_description] Fibonacci numbers, cellular automata, and an extension of the Erdős–Ko–Rado theorem: Daniel Kleitman reviews highlights from an edited volume honoring the mathematician Ron Graham on his eightieth birthday, Connections in Discrete Mathematics. Kleitman’s review is notable for containing a proof of a conjecture advanced by Peter Frankl and Andrey Kupavskii—the authors of a chapter in this volume.

  ---

  
  
• ######### Contributor Article Content #########
  ######### Card Contributor Article #########

  Mathematics Matrix Madness [long_description] Considering infinitesimally-small probabilities, computer simulacra, and synapse firings, Daniel Kleitman marshals some mathematical objections to Nick Bostrom’s well-known paper, “Are You Living in a Computer Simulation?”

  ---

  
  
• ######### Contributor Article Content #########
  ######### Card Contributor Article #########

  Physics The Dark Side [long_description] Why would a dark-matter alien being wish to plant life on our planet? A brief consideration of Caleb Scharf’s Nautilus article “Is Physical Law an Alien Intelligence?” by mathematician Daniel Kleitman.

  ---

  
  
• ######### Contributor Article Content #########
  ######### Card Contributor Article #########

  Astronomy It’s You, Again [long_description] If something has happened once, must it have had a finite, non-zero probability of happening? Are there an infinite number of copies of you, in an infinite number of local universes, in an infinite universe? Mathematician Daniel Kleitman says no. A review of Max Tegmark’s Our Mathematical Universe.

  ---