Here’s a simple-sounding problem: Imagine a circular fence that encloses one acre of grass. If you tie a goat to the inside of the fence, how long a rope do you need to allow the animal access to ...

In principle, this impossible math allows for a glue-free bridge of stacked blocks that can stretch across the Grand Canyon—and into infinity Keep going. If you stack as many blocks as you can, what ...

DeepMind has used a large language model (LLM) to generate a novel solution to one of humanity’s toughest math problems — in a breakthrough that could herald a new era in AI development. The model, ...

One idle evening last October, Mehtaab Sawhney took up an old pastime. He began perusing the website erdosproblems.com, an updated record of the 1,179 conjectures left behind by the eccentric and ...

Solving one of the oldest algebra problems isn't a bad claim to fame, and it's a claim Norman Wildberger can now make: The mathematician has solved what are known as higher-degree polynomial equations ...

In September 2019, news broke regarding progress on this 82-year-old question, thanks to prolific mathematician Terence Tao. And while the story of Tao’s breakthrough is promising, the problem isn’t ...

You can probably think of a time when you’ve used math to solve an everyday problem, such as calculating a tip at a restaurant or determining the square footage of a room. But what role does math play ...

Diophantus of Alexandria revolutionized algebra with Arithmetica, pioneering symbolic notation and abstract number theory.