When my students grow too dependent on their calculators, I ask them to find a number that, when multiplied by itself, gives them 2. Students quickly see that since 1² = 1 and 2² = 4, the answer has ...

The Vampyr Nation is pinned down and enacting its final plan, but Pythagoras is watching and has his own designs which will end the Vampyr Nation once and for all. Plus, he is being aided by ...

The literature world has seen more than its share of controversy. The best stories tend to provoke the strongest reactions—both positive and negative—in readers, which is why so many classic books ...

For centuries, one of algebra’s oldest puzzles has remained unsolved—how to find exact answers for higher-degree polynomials, where the variable is raised to the fifth power or more. Mathematicians ...

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In the time of Greek Antiquity, there was a great mathematic philosopher who algebra students would damn in the millennia following named Pythagoras. A student of Pythagoras, named Zalmoxis, loved his ...

The golden ratio is an almost mythical number that you may have heard of in various areas of architecture or design. For example, many claim the ancient Greek Parthenon has numerous examples of the ...

Imagine being asked to pick a number from 1 to 10. You are quite likely to pick a whole number; I have never seen someone do otherwise. But you could also pick the number pi, whose decimal expansion ...

Katie has a PhD in maths, specializing in the intersection of dynamical systems and number theory. She reports on topics from maths and history to society and animals. Katie has a PhD in maths, ...

“Do you see the pattern? Each number in the series after the first two numbers is the sum of the preceding two numbers.” That’s how I began my last column focusing on the Fibonacci sequence, which ...