News tagged with mathematics

Predicting burglary patterns through math modeling of crime

Pattern formation in physical, biological, and sociological systems has been studied for many years. Despite the fact that these subject areas are completely diverse, the mathematics that describes underlying patterns in ...

Other Sciences / Mathematics

created May 31, 2012 | popularity 4 / 5 (1) | comments 4 | with audio podcast

Teenager reportedly finds solution to 350 year old math and physics problem

(Phys.org) -- In Isaac Newton's Principia Mathematica published in 1687, the man many consider the most brilliant mathematician of all time used a mathematical formula to describe the path taken by an obj ...

Other Sciences / Mathematics

created May 29, 2012 | popularity 4.5 / 5 (27) | comments 51 | with audio podcast weblog

Math predicts size of clot-forming cells

UC Davis mathematicians have helped biologists figure out why platelets, the cells that form blood clots, are the size and shape that they are. Because platelets are important both for healing wounds and in strokes and other ...

Other Sciences / Mathematics

created May 25, 2012 | popularity not rated yet | comments 0 | with audio podcast

New mathematical framework formalizes oddball programming techniques

Two years ago, Martin Rinard's group at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory proposed a surprisingly simple way to make some computer procedures more efficient: Just skip a bunch of ...

Technology / Computer Sciences

created May 23, 2012 | popularity 4.5 / 5 (20) | comments 16 | with audio podcast

Hacking code of leaf vein architecture solves mysteries, allows predictions of past climate

(Phys.org) -- UCLA life scientists have discovered new laws that determine the construction of leaf vein systems as leaves grow and evolve. These easy-to-apply mathematical rules can now be used to better ...

Biology / Plants & Animals

created May 23, 2012 | popularity 4.1 / 5 (12) | comments 2 | with audio podcast

In future, phones can identify the Troubadour on the tree top

In spring, the sound of birds serenading fills the air. The Department of Signal Processing and Acoustics is developing a system that can recognize a bird species based on a song segment. The system can be ...

Biology / Plants & Animals

created May 22, 2012 | popularity not rated yet | comments 0

Study shows subway systems develop in remarkably similar ways

(Phys.org) -- Visitors to major cities in the world might disagree, but a small group of French and British researchers has found that regardless of city density, structure and other factors, subway systems ...

Other Sciences / Mathematics

created May 22, 2012 | popularity 5 / 5 (5) | comments 2 | with audio podcast report

Why rumors spread fast in social networks

Information spreads fast in social networks. This could be observed during recent events. Now computer scientists from the German Saarland University provide the mathematical proof for this and come up with a surprising explanation.

Other Sciences / Mathematics

created May 21, 2012 | popularity 4 / 5 (2) | comments 0

Bridging the gender-gap in maths

(Phys.org) -- A concerning gender-gap exists in career aspirations among Australian youth across science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields, a new study has found.

Other Sciences / Social Sciences

created May 15, 2012 | popularity 2.3 / 5 (3) | comments 0

Mathematical physics reveal nature's formula for survival (w/ Video)

(Phys.org) -- The vascular system of a leaf provides its structure and delivers its nutrients. When you light up that vascular structure with some fluorescent dye and view it using time-lapse photography, details begin to ...

Other Sciences / Mathematics

created May 14, 2012 | popularity 3.9 / 5 (12) | comments 10 | with audio podcast

New research could mean faster computers and better mobile phones

Graphene and carbon nanotubes could improve the electronics used in computers and mobile phones, reveals new research from the University of Gothenburg, Sweden.

Nanotechnology / Nanomaterials

created May 14, 2012 | popularity 3 / 5 (2) | comments 1

The new world of gamma-ray optics

Scientists discover that certain materials like silicon or gold exhibit a surprisingly large refractive index for extremely high energetic gamma-rays.

Physics / Condensed Matter

created May 14, 2012 | popularity 5 / 5 (6) | comments 0

DNA tug of war

A mathematical model created by Aalto University (Finland) researcher Timo Ikonen explains for the first time how the DNA chains in our genome are translocated through nanopores that are only a couple of nanometres thick.

Physics / General Physics

created May 11, 2012 | popularity not rated yet | comments 1

Inside a mathematical proof lies literature, says Stanford's Reviel Netz

Like novelists, mathematicians are creative authors. With diagrams, symbolism, metaphor, double entendre and elements of surprise, a good proof reads like a good story.

Other Sciences / Mathematics

created May 08, 2012 | popularity 3 / 5 (3) | comments 0

Gaseous emissions from dinosaurs may have warmed prehistoric earth

Sauropod dinosaurs could in principle have produced enough of the greenhouse gas methane to warm the climate many millions of years ago, at a time when the Earth was warm and wet. That's according to calculations ...

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

created May 07, 2012 | popularity 2.6 / 5 (15) | comments 252 | with audio podcast

Mathematics

Mathematics is the science and study of quantity, structure, space, and change. Mathematicians seek out patterns, formulate new conjectures, and establish truth by rigorous deduction from appropriately chosen axioms and definitions.

There is debate over whether mathematical objects such as numbers and points really exist or whether they are manmade. The mathematician Benjamin Peirce called mathematics "the science that draws necessary conclusions". Albert Einstein, on the other hand, stated that "as far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality."

Through the use of abstraction and logical reasoning, mathematics evolved from counting, calculation, measurement, and the systematic study of the shapes and motions of physical objects. Practical mathematics has been a human activity for as far back as written records go (see: History of Mathematics). Rigorous arguments first appeared in Greek mathematics, most notably in Euclid's Elements. Mathematics continued to develop, in fitful bursts, until the Renaissance, when mathematical innovations interacted with new scientific discoveries, leading to an acceleration in research that continues to the present day.

Today, mathematics is used throughout the world as an essential tool in many fields, including natural science, engineering, medicine, and the social sciences. Applied mathematics, the branch of mathematics concerned with application of mathematical knowledge to other fields, inspires and makes use of new mathematical discoveries and sometimes leads to the development of entirely new disciplines. Mathematicians also engage in pure mathematics, or mathematics for its own sake, without having any application in mind, although practical applications for what began as pure mathematics are often discovered later.

For more information about Mathematics, read the full article at Wikipedia.
This text uses material from Wikipedia and is available under the GNU Free Documentation License.