It’s not often that 5-year-olds can grasp questions at the frontiers of computer science, but it can happen. Suppose, for instance, that a kindergartner named Alice has two apples, but she prefers ...

A new proof about prime numbers illuminates the subtle relationship between addition and multiplication — and raises hopes for progress on the famous abc conjecture. One morning last November, the ...

Little progress had been made in solving Ramsey problems since the 1930s. Now, researchers have found the answer to r(4,t), a longstanding Ramsey problem that has perplexed the math world for decades.

The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. A new proof has brought mathematicians one step closer to understanding the hidden order of those “atoms of arithmetic,” the prime ...

A variation of a puzzle called the “pick-up sticks problem” asks the following question: If I have some number of sticks with random lengths between 0 and 1, what are the chances that no three of ...

A mathematician who went from obscurity to luminary status in 2013 for cracking a century-old question about prime numbers now claims to have solved another. The problem is similar to—but distinct ...

Imagine Jo: Everyone in Jo's life recognizes her as an outstanding problem solver. She's the type of person who seems capable ...

How much of your disbelief are you able to suspend? The more willing you are to just go along with the new Netflix series “3 Body Problem” and not question its increasingly frequent leaps in logic, ...

Everybody seems to be talking about 3 Body Problem, the new Netflix series based on Cixin Liu’s Remembrance of Earth’s Past book trilogy. Fewer people are talking about the two series’ namesake: The ...

When locals in the charming Austrian lakeside village of Hallstatt staged a blockade of the main access tunnel, brandishing placards asking visitors to ‘think of the children’, it highlighted what can ...

Yesterday's edition of On Numbers told the unhappy story of America's construction slowdown since 2005. Today's version takes a shorter -- and more upbeat -- look at the same problem. On Numbers ...