For four decades, a quiet boundary in pure mathematics kept a powerful theorem locked inside the safe world of finite quantities. Now a new result known as Sebestyen’s theorem has pushed that boundary ...

Source: Slide 15 of a PowerPoint presentation, accompanying a June 2016 OECD report, “Equations and Inequalities.” Click here for a larger version. Abstract, pure math — solving disembodied equations ...

Applied mathematics vs pure mathematics q My child has chosen commerce in Class XI. We are confused whether to choose applied mathematics or pure mathematics. Will choosing applied maths put her at a ...

Get your news from a source that’s not owned and controlled by oligarchs. Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily. Over at the Washington Monthly, Jill Barshay reports on the latest study comparing ...

Eugenia Cheng’s passion for theoretical mathematics is rivaled only by her love of food. In talks and in her book, How to Bake Pi: An Edible Exploration of the Mathematics of Mathematics, the ...

Mathematics is full of weird number systems that most people have never heard of and would have trouble even conceptualizing. But rational numbers are familiar. They’re the counting numbers and the ...

As hard-pressed universities axe abstract study, the codebreaker’s great niece and top mathematicians are fighting back Almost exactly 80 years ago, British codebreakers made a crucial breakthrough.

At the frontiers of theoretical physics, many of the most popular ideas have one thing in common: they begin from a mathematical framework that seeks to explain more things than our currently ...

Abstract, pure math – solving disembodied equations filled with x's and y's – can often seem boring. Creative math teachers commonly try to come up with concrete, real-world examples to motivate ...