https://phys.org/science-news/mathematics en-us The latest news on mathematics, math, math science, mathematical science and math technology. University of Michigan researchers have added a new dimension to the mathematics used to predict the outcomes of all manner of competitions, including sports, games and social hierarchies in both humans and animals. https://phys.org/news/2024-11-shallow-sports-deep-social-hierarchies.html Mathematics Social Sciences Wed, 06 Nov 2024 14:00:01 EST news650106241 How trustworthy is a positive HIV test result? How probable is an actual infection when the test is positive? Even professionals often get such questions wrong, which can lead to misdiagnoses and unnecessary surgeries. https://phys.org/news/2024-11-probability-errors-medicine-law.html Mathematics Education Wed, 06 Nov 2024 12:50:03 EST news650119801 Graphs are everywhere. In discrete mathematics, they are structures that show the connections between points, much like a public transportation network. Mathematicians have long sought to develop algorithms that can compare any two graphs. https://phys.org/news/2024-11-hard-theory-easy-graph-isomorphism.html Mathematics Wed, 06 Nov 2024 10:54:04 EST news650112841 A new statistical model could help to address the age-old question of how to price non-physical, intangible goods like data, say scientists. https://phys.org/news/2024-11-framework-games-chance-price-intangible.html Mathematics Economics & Business Wed, 06 Nov 2024 09:48:36 EST news650108912 We're increasingly aware of how misinformation can influence elections. About 73% of Americans report seeing misleading election news, and about half struggle to discern what is true or false. https://phys.org/news/2024-11-misinformation-virus-mathematical-drawn-epidemiology.html Mathematics Social Sciences Tue, 05 Nov 2024 09:20:12 EST news650020801 Cause and effect. We understand this concept from an early age. Tug on a pull toy's string, and the toy follows. Naturally, things get much more complicated as a system grows, as the number of variables increases, and as noise enters the picture. Eventually, it can become almost impossible to tell whether a variable is causing an effect or is simply correlated or associated with it. https://phys.org/news/2024-11-mathematics-effect.html Mathematics Fri, 01 Nov 2024 12:19:04 EDT news649682341 A new study reveals it would take far longer than the lifespan of our universe for a typing monkey to randomly produce Shakespeare. So, while the Infinite Monkey Theorem is true, it is also somewhat misleading. https://phys.org/news/2024-10-monkey-unable-hamlet-lifetime-universe.html Mathematics Wed, 30 Oct 2024 10:07:04 EDT news649501597 Teachers report thinking that if girls do better in math than boys, it is probably because of their innate ability and effort. But they also report that when boys do well in math, it is more likely due to parental support and society's higher expectations for their success. https://phys.org/news/2024-10-math-teachers-view-student-differently.html Mathematics Education Mon, 28 Oct 2024 20:40:01 EDT news649337790 In 2022, U.S. high school students Calcea Johnson and Ne'Kiya Jackson astonished teachers when they discovered a new way to prove Pythagoras' theorem using trigonometry after entering a competition at their local high school. As a result, both students were awarded keys to the city of New Orleans, and even received personal praise from Michelle Obama. https://phys.org/news/2024-10-high-school-students-ways-pythagoras.html Mathematics Education Mon, 28 Oct 2024 00:10:02 EDT news649068964 Researchers from The University of New Mexico School of Engineering looked to the natural world to explain how synchronized systems can work more efficiently and made a significant discovery. Their results were published in the journal Nature Communications. https://phys.org/news/2024-10-fireflies-drones-uncover-strategy-synchronization.html Mathematics Fri, 25 Oct 2024 09:55:00 EDT news649068898 If you've ever watched a large flock of birds on the wing, moving across the sky like a cloud with various shapes and directional changes appearing from seeming chaos, or the maneuvers of an ant colony forming bridges and rafts to escape floods, you've been observing what scientists call self-organization. https://phys.org/news/2024-10-theory-physics-principle-rattling.html Mathematics Wed, 23 Oct 2024 13:14:03 EDT news648908042 "Talk about extreme." That was the response of Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris at September's televised debate, after her rival, Donald Trump, made the baseless claim that migrants had been eating the dogs and cats of their neighbors in Springfield, Ohio. https://phys.org/news/2024-10-trump-messaging-extreme-mathematician.html Mathematics Political science Wed, 23 Oct 2024 11:40:01 EDT news648901346 In the fields of physics, mathematics, and engineering, partial differential equations (PDEs) are essential for modeling various phenomena, from heat diffusion to particle motion and wave propagation. While some PDEs can be solved analytically, many require numerical methods, which can be time-consuming and computationally intensive. https://phys.org/news/2024-10-photonic-method-electromagnetic-rapidly-partial.html Mathematics Mon, 21 Oct 2024 11:22:37 EDT news648728553 On October 16, 1843, the Irish mathematician William Rowan Hamilton had an epiphany during a walk alongside Dublin's Royal Canal. He was so excited he took out his penknife and carved his discovery right then and there on Broome Bridge. https://phys.org/news/2024-10-letters-knife-stone-bridge-graffitied.html Mathematics Wed, 16 Oct 2024 12:40:57 EDT news648301247 A Rutgers University-New Brunswick professor who has devoted his career to resolving the mysteries of higher mathematics has solved two separate, fundamental problems that have perplexed mathematicians for decades. https://phys.org/news/2024-10-breakthrough-mathematician-problems.html Mathematics Wed, 09 Oct 2024 14:57:13 EDT news647704628 The COVID-19 pandemic gave the global medical community the opportunity to take giant strides forward in understanding how to develop vaccines and implement public health measures designed to control the spread of disease, but the crisis also offered researchers the chance to learn more about another kind of contagion: ideas. https://phys.org/news/2024-10-ideas-contagious-human-interaction-networks.html Mathematics Social Sciences Wed, 09 Oct 2024 12:54:10 EDT news647697246 As is well known, the normal distribution is a key tool in probability and statistics. It can be described as a distribution that obeys a universal rule derived from one of the most important theorems in probability: the central limit theorem, often called the CLT. More practically, it also describes how some data naturally cluster around a central value, the shape of whose corresponding histograms (representing the distribution of the data) is a well equilibrated bell curve. https://phys.org/news/2024-10-team-theoretical-strategy-generating-asymmetric.html Mathematics Tue, 08 Oct 2024 14:50:03 EDT news647617802 Networks, which include nodes and connections, can help researchers model dynamic systems like the spread of disease or how the brain processes information. https://phys.org/news/2024-10-higher-interactions-remodel-landscape-complex.html Mathematics Wed, 02 Oct 2024 14:00:02 EDT news647079501 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 in solving complex problems such as curing a disease? https://phys.org/news/2024-10-complex-problem-math.html Mathematics Education Tue, 01 Oct 2024 15:10:01 EDT news647013410 The theory of indirect reciprocity holds that people who earn a good reputation by helping others are more likely to be rewarded by third parties, but widespread cooperation depends on agreement about reputations. https://phys.org/news/2024-09-method-sustain-social-cooperation.html Mathematics Social Sciences Thu, 26 Sep 2024 10:28:04 EDT news646565282 Election polls often tighten up remarkably as the election date draws near. "Leave" (the European Union) won the UK election of May 2016 with a majority of 51.9%, but earlier the polls weren't nearly as tight—in January 2011 "Remain" was up by about 20 percentage points. In the 2020 presidential election in Poland, Andrzej Duda won with 51.0% of the votes, whereas he was up by about 5 percentage points just eight weeks earlier. https://phys.org/news/2024-09-large-electorates-tend-evenly-results.html Mathematics Political science Mon, 23 Sep 2024 10:00:01 EDT news646304327 Perpetual American strangle options (PASOs) offer investors a method for minimizing risk during highly volatile market scenarios by allowing them to buy or sell options at any date without an expiration date. In a new study, researchers investigated the pricing of PASOs under a stochastic volatility model with fast mean reversion which better captures real markets compared to traditional models. https://phys.org/news/2024-09-precise-pricing-formula-perpetual-american.html Mathematics Economics & Business Mon, 16 Sep 2024 16:48:04 EDT news645724081 Several fields of mathematics have developed in total isolation, using their own "undecipherable" coded languages. In a new study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Tamás Hausel, professor of mathematics at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA), presents "big algebras," a two-way mathematical 'dictionary' between symmetry, algebra, and geometry, that could strengthen the connection between the distant worlds of quantum physics and number theory. https://phys.org/news/2024-09-mathematical-dictionary-quantum-physics-theory.html Mathematics Thu, 12 Sep 2024 10:28:58 EDT news645355732 Tiles that fill two- and three-dimensional spaces with no gaps—including triangles, squares, hexagons, cubes, and other polyhedra—are typically designed with sharp corners and flat faces (straight edges). https://phys.org/news/2024-09-soft-cells-rounded-tile-echo.html Mathematics Tue, 10 Sep 2024 13:35:02 EDT news645194101 In a world where organizing a simple meeting can feel like herding cats, new research from Case Western Reserve University reveals just how challenging finding a suitable meeting time becomes as the number of participants grows. https://phys.org/news/2024-09-mathematical-explores-statistical-mysteries-successfully.html Mathematics Mon, 09 Sep 2024 15:12:55 EDT news645113572 Darwin was puzzled by cooperation in nature—it ran directly against natural selection and the notion of survival of the fittest. But over the past decades, evolutionary mathematicians have used game theory to better understand why mutual cooperation persists when evolution should favor self-serving cheaters. https://phys.org/news/2024-09-mathematicians-puzzling-breakdown-cooperative-behavior.html Mathematics Tue, 03 Sep 2024 08:30:01 EDT news644512757 The way we memorize information—a mathematical problem statement, for example—reveals the way we process it. A team from the University of Geneva (UNIGE), in collaboration with CY Cergy Paris University (CYU) and Bourgogne University (uB), has shown how different solving methods can alter the way information is memorized and even create false memories. https://phys.org/news/2024-08-mathematical-methods-affect.html Mathematics Education Fri, 30 Aug 2024 10:25:43 EDT news644232338 Computer graphics and geometry processing research provide the tools needed to simulate physical phenomena like fire and flames, aiding the creation of visual effects in video games and movies as well as the fabrication of complex geometric shapes using tools like 3D printing. https://phys.org/news/2024-08-framework-parabolic-partial-differential-equations.html Mathematics Wed, 28 Aug 2024 17:11:03 EDT news644083861 The summer holidays are ending, which for many concludes with a long drive home and reliance on GPS devices to get safely home. But every now and then, GPS devices can suggest strange directions or get briefly confused about your location. But until now, no one knew for sure when the satellites were in a good enough position for the GPS system to give reliable direction. https://phys.org/news/2024-08-mathematicians-debunk-gps-assumptions.html Mathematics Wed, 28 Aug 2024 13:19:04 EDT news644069941 Number theoretic transform (NTT) is widely recognized as the most efficient method for computing polynomial multiplication with high dimension and integral coefficients, due to its quasilinear complexity. https://phys.org/news/2024-08-generalized-theoretic.html Mathematics Wed, 28 Aug 2024 11:59:14 EDT news644065147