Our online world requires us to share private information with others. This is possible thanks to public key encryption, which works because a certain mathematics problem in number theory is…
Is public-key encryption in danger of collapse?
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Philosophy and Physics in the Kadison-Singer Conjecture
A promising proof of the so-called Kadison-Singer conjecture was announced yesterday. Mathematicians are excited, because this conjecture is equivalent to a remarkable number of open problems in other fields. And…
A peek inside the mind of a mathematician
This is not new, but it’s one of the very best math videos on the inter-tubes. It’s designed by Bill Thurston, who’s known not only for his mathematical talent (winning him…
Where the material conditional gets its truth conditions
Oh, the material conditional. Some love it, some hate it. But can we all agree that explaining it to the uninitiated is a perennial headache? If you’ve taught baby-logic, you…
Springer Publishes Crank ‘Proofs’
crank, n. A pejorative term for a person who holds a belief that a vast majority of their contemporaries consider false. A “cranky” belief is so wildly at variance with…