Dec 27th, 2008 · The jangly opening chord of The Beatles' hit has long frustrated amateur guitarists seeking to replicate it. So a Canadian mathematician used sound-wave analysis to figure it out. It appears that the Fab Four got by with a little help.
Oct 14th, 2008 · In 1950, a mathematician asked, if a computer could think, how could we tell? His answer: it could hold a conversation. In this spirit, the annual Loebner Artificial Intelligence Prize goes to the most human-like computer. This year, to a program called Elbot. When asked, how's it going? Elbot responded: I feel terrible today. This morning I poured milk over my breakfast instead of oil, and it rusted before I could eat it.
Sep 29th, 2008 · Many people generate an immense amounts of digital data during a single day — often without a second thought. But Stephen Baker, a senior writer at BusinessWeek, warns that the information generated is being monitored by a group of entrepreneurial mathematicians.
Sep 15th, 2008 · David Foster Wallace, the author of the Infinite Jest and The Mistresses' Daughter committed suicide on Friday. He was 46. Foster Wallace was known as an explosive writer who cast his work with dark irony in subjects ranging from tennis to politics to mathematics to popular culture.
Aug 8th, 2008 · Actress and mathematician Danica McKellar is on a mission to get middle-school girls to stop hating math. In her new book Kiss My Math, — a follow-up to Math Doesn't Suck — McKellar breaks math into easy-to-digest concepts so girls can "show pre-algebra who's boss."
Jul 4th, 2008 · Before Bill Gates became a household name, he went to Harvard. His sophomore year, he was assigned a complicated mathematics problem, which — no surprise — he solved. His paper on the solution was published, and until recently it remained the best solution to that problem: stacking pancakes.
Jun 9th, 2008 · Hip-hop fans who play chess can now head to a new online social network site called WuChess. Music and chess have a mathematical rhythm and flow that make them similar, says The RZA, a founding member of the Wu-Tang Clan who also backs the new site.
Apr 2nd, 2008 · If you've ever tried to peel some tape off a roll, you know that it starts out OK but then it starts to triangulate -- and you end up with a messy strip of tape. The same thing will happen when you try to peel wallpaper off or shrink-wrap off a CD. But now researchers have figured out the forces at work that make that happen.