A key algorithm that quietly empowers and simplifies our electronics is the Fourier transform, which turns the graph of a signal varying in time into a graph that describes it in terms of its ...

Multiplication of two numbers is easy, right? At primary school we learn how to do long multiplication like this: Methods similar to this go back thousands of years, at least to the ancient Sumerians ...

Cathy O’Neil believes there is a dark side to numbers. A mathematician by training, she earned her doctorate at Harvard and went on to become a tenure-track professor at Barnard College. In 2007, ...

Mathematics often seems like an abstract concept, but its applications can have profound impacts on the world around us. From predicting the next word in a sentence to understanding how Google’s ...

Add Popular Science (opens in a new tab) Adding us as a Preferred Source in Google by using this link indicates that you would like to see more of our content in Google News results. All around us, ...

You scrambled up a Rubik’s cube, and now you want to put it back in order. What sequence of moves should you make? Surprise: You can answer this question with modern algebra. You might remember ...