Welcome to Visual Math

When researchers make an exciting discovery, the data behind it are often closely guarded until they can be examined, developed and then revealed--at least in part--in a peer-reviewed journal with all of the proverbial fanfare. [More]

If there's one thing more potentially contentious than the international politics of global warming (which the world has spent at least the past 20-plus years dithering about), it's the politics of the most radical suggestion to solve it: geoengineering . After all, he who controls Earth's thermostat...

Web sites such as Amazon, TripAdvisor and Yelp have long depended on customers to rate books, hotels and restaurants. The philosophy behind this so-called crowdsourcing strategy holds that the truest and most accurate evaluations will come from aggregating the opinions of a large and diverse group of people. Yet a...

How much money do you put away each month toward retirement? Maybe you sock away all you can, already dreaming of that Florida condo. Or maybe you can’t even imagine where you’ll be then, what you’ll want to use the money for, even what you’ll be like: when you think...

Die-hard advocates of alternate energy might fantasize about cars that could one day run on water. But scientists in India have gone a step further. They’ve mathematically modeled an engine that should allow a motorcycle to run on air--compressed air, that is. Their design is described in the Journal...

Reform or Re-reform? In “ Numbers War ” [News Scan], Linda Baker’s treatment of our inquiry-based Discovering Mathematics series is filled with errors and naive claims. For instance, there was no “three-year pilot” of our texts, contrary to what Baker reported. The article repeats many unfounded criticisms of...

Researchers at Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.) have invented a real-life Transformer, a device that can fold itself into two shapes on command. The system is hardly ready to do battle with the Decepticons--the tiny contraption forms only relatively crude boat and airplane shapes--but the concept...

Award-winning writer and physicist Graham Farmelo talks with podcast host Steve Mirsky (pictured) about The Strangest Man, Farmelo's biography of Nobel Prize–winning theoretical physicist Paul Dirac. [More]

"The Strangest Man" of Science, Part 1

(Announcer’s call of “GOAL!”)

That’s a shout World Cup enthusiasts don’t hear too frequently. Soccer’s known for low-scoring games, which makes it difficult to find an objective means of measuring the skill of top players. In a given game, a couple might nail a goal or have an assist. But who’s...

The summer solstice that falls this year on June 21 marks the longest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere, sunlight-wise. Almost imperceptibly, however, Earth's day–night cycle --one rotation on its axis--is growing longer year by year, and has been for most of the planet's history.

Forces from afar...

The continuing economic crisis in the U.S. and Europe is quickly sharpening the debate over public finances. Several countries have budget deficits around 10 percent of national income or larger, and their governments must show their publics and the financial markets that they have a plan for dealing with these...

Edit or's note: In light of the recent death of Martin Gardner, we are republishing this article from the August 1998 issue of Scientific American. Gardner wrote the "Mathematical Games" column for Scientific American from 1956 to 1981, and continued to contribute columns on...

Data visualization is something of a cottage industry these days--witness Edward Tufte, an emeritus professor of political science at Yale University, who has built a mini empire founded on his well-received books, which bear titles like Visual Explanations; Envisioning Information; and The Visual Display of Quantitative Information...

Editor's Note: Douglas Hofstadter gave permission to Scientific American to post this essay in light of the death of Martin Gardner, who wrote the magazine's "Mathematical Games" column for 25 years and published more than 70 books. Gardner died May 22, at 95.

I've been trying to...

Editor's Note: Martin Gardner , who wrote the "Mathematical Games" column for Scientific American magazine for 25 years and published more than 70 books, died May 22 at 95. Scientific American editor Steve Mirsky solicited the following tributes and remembrances of Gardner from various colleagues. We...

Martin Gardner died May 22nd at 95. [More]

Editor's note: In light of the recent death of Martin Gardner, we are republishing this column from the March 2002 issue of Scientific American.

In 1950 Martin Gardner published an article in the Antioch Review entitled "The Hermit Scientist," about what we would today call pseudoscientists. It...

News of Martin Gardner's death began circulating on Saturday night. For those of you who are unfamiliar with his work, here's a taste of the kinds of puzzles he was famous for bringing to the world. Of course, he did much more: 15 years ago, I had the great honor...