Open Culture » Math

Historians have long thought that the decimal point first came into use in 1593, when the German mathematician Christopher Clavius wrote an astronomy text called Astrolabium. It turns out, howeve...

https://www.openculture.com/2024/03/the-decimal-point-is-150-years-older-than-we-thought-emerging-in-renaissance-italy.html

If you’re a regular Open Culture reader, you have hopefully thoroughly immersed yourself in The Map of Physics, an animated video–a visual aid for the modern age–that mapped out the field ...

https://www.openculture.com/2023/03/the-map-of-mathematics-an-animated-video.html

Some real talk from retired geometry teacher Wendy Lichtman, above, the author of several math-themed YA novels: Not many 15-year-olds care that two parallel lines are crossed by a transversal. �...

https://www.openculture.com/2023/02/a-retired-math-teacher-helps-students-learn-geometry-through-quilting.html

In recent decades, a medieval Persian word has come to prominence in English and other major world languages. Many of use it on a daily basis, often while regarding the concept to which it refers...

https://www.openculture.com/2022/04/why-algorithms-are-called-algorithms.html

“A mathematician’s favorite composer? Top of the list probably comes Bach.” Thus speaks a reliable source on the matter: Oxford mathematician Marcus du Sautoy in the Numberphile video above...

https://www.openculture.com/2021/11/bach-on-a-mobius-strip.html

In 1979, mathematician Kurt Gödel, artist M.C. Escher, and composer J.S. Bach walked into a book title, and you may well know the rest. Douglas R. Hofstadter won a Pulitzer Prize for Gödel, Esc...

https://www.openculture.com/2021/08/take-an-intellectual-odyssey-with-a-free-mit-course-on-douglas-hofstadters-pulitzer-prize-winning-book-godel-escher-bach-an-eternal-golden-braid.html

In 20th-century mathematics, the renowned name of Nicolas Bourbaki stands alone in its class — the class, that is, of renowned mathematical names that don’t actually belong to real people. Bo...

https://www.openculture.com/2021/07/an-introduction-to-nicolas-bourbaki.html

An observer once called the Mandelbrot Set “The Thumbprint of God,” the simple equation that led to the discovery of fractal geography, chaos theory, and why games like No Man’s Sky even ex...

https://www.openculture.com/2021/05/david-gilmour-composes-a-soundtrack-to-arthur-c-clarkes-documentary-on-mind-bending-fractals.html

The two characters at the core of origami (折り紙), one of the best-known Japanese words around the world, mean “folding” and “paper.” You might well have guessed that, but given the v...

https://www.openculture.com/2021/03/the-mathematics-behind-origami.html

If we envision serial killers as figures who taunt law enforcement with cryptic messages sent to the media, we do so in large part because of the Zodiac Killer, who terrorized northern California...

https://www.openculture.com/2020/12/three-amateur-cryptographers-finally-decrypted-the-zodiac-killers-letters.html

The late 19th Century was the time of Charles Darwin and James Clerk Maxwell, of Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell. It was a golden age of science and technology. So you might wonder how ha...

https://www.openculture.com/2020/05/this-is-what-an-1869-mit-entrance-exam-looks-like.html

Euler’s conjecture, a theory proposed by Leonhard Euler in 1769, hung in there for 200 years. Then L.J. Lander and T.R. Parkin came along in 1966, and debunked the conjecture in two swift se...

https://www.openculture.com/2020/02/shortest-known-paper-published-in-a-serious-math-journal.html

Have accomplished abstract geometrical artists come out of any demographic in greater numbers than from the women of South Asia? Not when even the most demanding art-school curriculum can’t hop...

https://www.openculture.com/2019/05/discover-kolams-the-traditional-indian-patterns-that-combine-art-mathematics-magic.html

Here’s the latest from Great Big Story: “Once upon a time, not long ago, the math world fell in love … with a chalk. But not just any chalk! This was Hagoromo: a Japanese brand so smooth, s...

https://www.openculture.com/2019/05/why-the-worlds-best-mathematicians-are-hoarding-japanese-chalk.html

Human imagination seems seriously limited when faced with the cosmic scope of time and space. We can imagine, through stop-motion animation and CGI, what it might be like to walk the earth with c...

https://www.openculture.com/2019/05/pioneering-computer-scientist-grace-hopper-shows-us-how-to-visualize-a-nanosecond-1983.html