You enter a cave. At the end of a dark corridor, you encounter a pair of sealed chambers. Inside each chamber is an all-knowing wizard. The prophecy says that with these oracles’ help, you can learn ...

Number theorist Andrew Granville on what mathematics really is — and why objectivity is never quite within reach. In 2012, the mathematician Shinichi Mochizuki claimed he had solved the abc conjecture ...

The Hechinger Report covers one topic: education. Sign up for our newsletters to have stories delivered to your inbox. Consider becoming a member to support our nonprofit journalism. Sarah Powell, an ...

Every day, dozens of like-minded mathematicians gather on an online forum called Zulip to build what they believe is the future of their field. They’re all devotees of a software program called Lean.

As artificial intelligence (AI) takes on increasingly critical roles—from managing power grids to piloting autonomous ...

This is an updated version of a story first published on May 5, 2024. For many high school students returning to class, it may seem like geometry and trigonometry were created by the Greeks as a form ...

The process of proofs and refutations described by Lakatos is essential in school mathematics to provide students with an opportunity to experience how mathematical knowledge develops dynamically ...

For 50 years, mathematicians have believed that the total number of real numbers is unknowable. A new proof suggests otherwise. In October 2018, David Asperó was on holiday in Italy, gazing out a car ...

Bill Whitaker is an award-winning journalist and 60 Minutes correspondent who has covered major news stories, domestically and across the globe, for more than four decades with CBS News. A high school ...

Mathematics is traditionally a solitary science. In 1986 Andrew Wiles withdrew to his study for seven years to prove Fermat’s theorem. The resulting proofs are often difficult for colleagues to ...

The Hechinger Report covers one topic: education. Sign up for our newsletters to have stories delivered to your inbox. Consider becoming a member to support our nonprofit journalism. Writing lesson ...

In a digital era plagued by growing privacy concerns and eroding institutional trust, the power to prove something without disclosing sensitive data is not merely an academic exercise—it's a ...