News tagged with mathematics
Time for a change? Scholars say calendar needs serious overhaul
Researchers at The Johns Hopkins University have discovered a way to make time stand still -- at least when it comes to the yearly calendar.
Dec 27, 2011 |
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Researchers create bizarre optical phenomena, defying the laws of reflection and refraction
Exploiting a novel technique called phase discontinuity, researchers at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) have induced light rays to behave in a way that defies the centuries-old ...
Sep 01, 2011 |
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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 ...
May 29, 2012 |
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'Perfect plastic' created
(PhysOrg.com) -- Researchers at the University of Leeds and Durham University have solved a long-standing problem that could revolutionize the way new plastics are developed.
Sep 29, 2011 |
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After almost 20 years, math problem falls
Mathematicians and engineers are often concerned with finding the minimum value of a particular mathematical function. That minimum could represent the optimal trade-off between competing criteria — between ...
Technology / Computer Sciences
Jul 18, 2011 |
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Magnetic fields can send particles to infinity
Researchers from the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM, Spain) have mathematically shown that particles charged in a magnetic field can escape into infinity without ever stopping. One of the conditions ...
Apr 17, 2012 |
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Mathematics: Mapping a fixed point
(PhysOrg.com) -- For fifty years, mathematicians have grappled with a so-called “fixed point” theorem. An EPFL-based team has now found an elegant, one-page solution that opens up new perspectives ...
Nov 23, 2011 |
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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
May 23, 2012 |
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Evolution reveals missing link between DNA and protein shape
Fifty years after the pioneering discovery that a protein's three-dimensional structure is determined solely by the sequence of its amino acids, an international team of researchers has taken a major step ...
Dec 07, 2011 |
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Experimental mathematics: Computing power leads to insights
In his 1989 book "The Emperor's New Mind", Roger Penrose commented on the limitations on human knowledge with a striking example: He conjectured that we would most likely never know whether a string of 10 ...
Oct 13, 2011 |
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Digital quantum simulator realized
(PhysOrg.com) -- The physicists of the University of Innsbruck and the Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information (IQOQI) in Innsbruck have come considerably closer to their goal to investigate complex ...
Sep 01, 2011 |
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Why Einstein was wrong about being wrong
If you want to get your mind around the research that won three astronomers the Nobel Prize in physics last week, it helps to think of the universe as a lump of dough - raisin-bread dough, to be precise - mixed, kneaded and ...
Oct 14, 2011 |
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Predicting random violence by mathematics
(PhysOrg.com) -- In a new study published in Science, researchers, led by physicist Neil Johnson from the University of Miami, show that attacks by groups such as the Taliban or Hezbollah may seem sporadic, they e ...
Jul 01, 2011 |
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Jellyfish replacing fish in over-exploited areas
(PhysOrg.com) -- Over-fished commercial stocks of plankton-eating fish have been replaced in several locations by jellyfish species. This appears to be something of a paradox because fish move quickly and ...
Sep 16, 2011 |
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Wolfram Alpha shows flights overhead
Wolfram Alpha, the online search service launched two years ago, now lets inquiring minds in the United States find out what flights happen to be overhead at any given moment.
Nov 18, 2011 |
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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.
