Mathematics

Mathematicians Report New Discovery About the Dodecahedron

Quanta Magazine: Even though mathematicians have spent over 2,000 years dissecting the structure of the five Platonic solids — the tetrahedron, cube, octahedron, icosahedron and dodecahedron — there’s still a lot we don’t know about them. Now, a trio of mathematicians…

Cambridge student rebuilds Polish Enigma-code-breaking box that paved the way for Turing … and Victory!

The Register: A Cambridge post-graduate student has recreated the “cyclometer”, the decryption device devised by Polish mathematicians that informed Alan Turing’s later code-breaking efforts. Turing famously devised the “Bombe”, a…

How and Why Computers Roll Loaded Dice

Quanta Magazine: Here’s a deceptively simple exercise: Come up with a random phone number. Seven digits in a sequence, chosen so that every digit is equally likely, and so that your choice of one digit doesn’t affect the next. Odds are,…

A Number Theorist Who Solves the Hardest Easy Problems

Quanta Magazine: When James Maynard was three, a health visitor came to his home in Chelmsford, just northeast of London, to check on his development. Such visits were routine for young children, and the assessor led him through a standard battery…