Browsing: Math

In October 2024 Luke Durant, an independent researcher in San Jose, Calif., announced that he had discovered the largest known prime number—so enormous it would take…

Remember when the University of California kicked off a trend by eliminating the SAT test as an admissions requirement five years ago? Now arrives the dispiriting…

November 19, 20253 min readNew Research Shows How AI Could Transform Math, Physics, Cancer Research, and MoreA new paper shows ChatGPT-5 emerging as a tool that…

Some say the reason most manhole covers are round is that a circle cannot fall through a smaller circular hole. Which of these other two-dimensional shapes…

Answer all questions in the form of a song title. 1. The Rob Base Postulate Given that a number greater than 1(x) is required to make…

“Hoisted by their own GPTards.” That’s how Meta’s Chief AI Scientist Yann LeCun described the blowback after OpenAI researchers did a victory lap over GPT-5’s supposed…

October 11, 20255 min readThe Math That Predicted the New PopeA decades-old technique from network science saw something in the papal conclave that AI missedBy Jack…

Love a good underdog story? There’s an incredible one unfolding in Cambridge right now: MIT custodians just walked in on this brilliant math student cleaning up…

New test scores from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), also known as the Nation’s Report Card, show eighth-graders’ science scores have fallen 4 points…

If you’ve ever shuffled a deck of playing cards, you’ve most likely created a unique deck. That is, you’re probably the only person who has ever…