Math and Computer Science in the News

Top Stories

Monday, March 19, 2012
A different take on graphic novels. - What do Kurt Vonnegut and the xy-axes have in common?
Full Story... - The Guardian

Tuesday, February 21, 2012
FFT stands for...?. - And why everyone will care.
Full Story... - Fast Company

Monday, February 6, 2012
Bad, just plain bad. - How mathematics can help you make really bad music.
Full Story... - Gizmodo

Monday, January 23, 2012
The unplanned impact of mathematics - What do a nineteenth century Irish mathematician and Lara Croft have in common?
Full Story... - Nature

Friday, January 6, 2012
The Alan Turing Year - A celebration of the life and work of Alan Turing in the year of the 100th anniversary of his birth.
Full Story... - Turing Centenary

Friday, December 23, 2011
Christmas Day, 1642 - [Newton] was the last of the magicians ...
Full Story... - The MacTutor History of Mathematics

Monday, December 12, 2011
Secrets that lie beneath ... - The Archimedes Palimpsest recovered.
Full Story... - The Guardian

Monday, November 28, 2011
Your brain and math anxiety ... - Just relaaaax.
Full Story... - Science Daily

Monday, November 14, 2011
Now that the human population has just passed 7 billion humans ... - How do we put 7 billion people in perspective?
Full Story... - CBC.ca

Friday, October 28, 2011
The trigonometry or tortellini - A poetic paean to pasta.
Full Story... - MacLeans.ca

Thursday, September 15, 2011
A world built on numbers - Just where did our complete dependence on numbers come from?
Full Story... - The National Post

Friday, August 05, 2011
Sit up! Don't slouch! - How comfortable are you with your computer acting as drill sergeant?
Full Story... - Science Daily

Monday, June 20, 2011
Phones and trees? - Trees are used extensively in computer science, but here computer science identifies trees.
Full Story... - MMA

Monday, May 30, 2011
Recreating the earliest uses of electronic computers - Can you find the University of Waterloo connection to this story? And it's not the computer ...
Full Story... - BBC

Thursday, May 12, 2011
Stonehenge, aliens, your house and randomness - Every location in the UK is at the intersection of three or more lines from ancient monuments. That can't be random ... can it?
Full Story... - The Guardian

Monday, April 15, 2011
Magic squares are given a whole new dimension. - What happens when you replace numbers by shapes in a magic square?
Full Story... - The Guardian

Monday, March 21, 2011
All it takes to beat a computer at trivia is a rocket scientist. - Are humans in jeopardy on Jeopardy?
Full Story... - Physorg.com

Tuesday, March 1, 2011
Game theory's take on the beautiful game - and diving. - Soccer and the Art of Deception.
Full Story... - The journal Science

Monday, Feb 14, 2011
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. - Won't you be my cardioid?
Full Story... - poetrywithmathematics.blogspot.com

Tuesday, Feb 1, 2011
No competition when it comes to the job hunt - Mathematical careers occupy the top five jobs according to CareerCast and the Wall Street Journal.
Full Story... - Wall Street Journal

Tuesday, Jan 17, 2011
Fruitful flies - How fruit fly biology can improve very large distributed computing performance.
Full Story... - Science Daily

Tuesday, Jan 4, 2011
A math-genius teenage hero coming to a theatre near you - An anime feature of a math prodigy and his love interest where virtual and real-world complications ensue.
Full Story... - New York Times

Monday, Dec 13, 2010
The tales mathematicians (and computer scientists) tell - Donald Knuth is one of the best known computer scientists in the world. Here he describes his family's emigration to America. There is lots more on him and on others.
Full Story... - Web of Stories

Tuesday, Nov 30, 2010
Masters of Math, From Old Babylon - An exhibition of Babylonian clay tablets entitled "Before Pythagoras"
Full Story... - New York Times

Wednesday, Nov 24, 2010
Into the matrix - Are you sure your teacher or students are real?
Full Story... - Toronto Star

Wednesday, Nov 10, 2010
Math and sleep - No, it's not what you think. Mathematical biologists have improved our understanding of our internal clock.
Full Story... - American Institute of Physics

Monday, Oct 25, 2010
So you want to win the World Series. - The fastest route around the bases is not the route taken by batters.
Full Story... - ScienceNews

Monday, Oct 18, 2010
Gathering for Gardner - Celebration of Mind - Martin Gardner is best known for his "Mathematical Games" column in Scientific American. These fun-filled events are his memorial.
Full Story... - Gathering for Gardner

Monday, Oct 4, 2010
Just how nasty can a virus be? - When it's state-sponsored malware, the question gets complicated. We can probably agree that the Stuxnet worm is very good at being very bad. Beyond that, there is lots of room for debate.
Full Story... - The Guardian Weekly

Monday, Sept 20, 2010
Without geometry, life is pointless - What are the mental habits of a mathematician?
Full Story... - A teacher's blog

Monday, Sept 13, 2010
Down the rabbit hole - The future of mathematics textbooks?
Full Story... - The Guardian

Thursday, July 29, 2010
Math is no match for locust swarms - It may be impossible to predict where they will strike next.
Full Story... - Wired.com

Monday, June 28, 2010
Pigeons beat humans at solving 'Monty Hall' problem - A famous probability puzzle fools most humans but not most pigeons. Scientists think that reason may be the reason.
Full Story ... - LiveScience

Tuesday, June 15, 2010
Sharks have math skills - How would you find your dinner if it was scattered about? How would a shark tackle this problem?
Full Story ... - Discovery News

Monday, June 7, 2010
Giraffes can swim, though poorly: study - Two mathematicians believe they have proved giraffes can swim. Computer generated mathematical models show that the world's tallest animal can theoretically cross rivers.
Full Story ... - CBC

Monday, May 31, 2010
Crop circle season arrives with a mathematical message - Mystery surrounds a mathematically designed shape which recently appeared in the countryside of Wiltshire, England.
Full Story ... - The Independent

Monday, May 17, 2010
Locating tsunami warning buoys - Everyone remembers the devasting Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004. Mathematics is being used to find the optimal placement of tsunami warning systems.
Full Story ... - ScienceDaily

Monday, May 10, 2010
Dan Snaith of Caribou brings energy to music and mathematics - How similar is composing a song to solving an equation or studying geometry? Connections between music and mathematics might be stronger than you think.
Full Story ... - The Washington Post

Monday, May 3, 2010
Fake anti-virus software a growing threat - One should always be extremely cautious when downloading anything from the internet. What can and should companies or governments do to combat the threat of malicious software?
Full Story... - CBC

Monday, April 26, 2010
Reunited set of math problems gives clues to how Lincoln learned - Historians discovered a missing page of math problems written by Abraham Lincoln. See the digitized version of his homework that is helping researchers better understand the 16th President of the United States.
Full Story... - The State Journal-Register

Monday, April 19, 2010
Flouridation may not do much for cavities - What does a Statistics Canada study on dental health mean for the controversy about fluoridation of drinking water? Are the statistics meaningful? Can important conclusions be made?
Full Story... - The Globe and Mail

Monday, April 12, 2010
Bathroom breaks could wait during gold-medal match - If the Olympics can cause an uneven demand for water, what other events might impact our use of the earth's resources? How can mathematics help us understand consumption patterns?
Full Story... - The Globe and Mail (subscription necessary)

Monday, April 5, 2010
Do We Need a 37-Cent Coin? - Is our current system of a penny, nickel, dime and quarter as efficient as it could be?
Full Story... - NY Times

Wenesday, March 31, 2010
The games people play? - How do you know when a game is really hard?
Full Story... - MIT

Monday, March 22, 2010
Why would you do geometry on a sphere? - Because it makes the world go round, or at least helps your GPS to work.
Full Story... - NY Times

Monday, March 15, 2010
Why women over 40 are good at math - Not only do female math students outperform men at Ontario's community colleges, but it's the 40-something female multi-taskers juggling jobs, families and mortgages who edge out their classmates of either sex at any age, new research shows.
Full Story... - Toronto Star

Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Google finds a lost letter of René Descartes - An interesting intersection of computing capabilities of the 21st century and one of most important mathematicians of the 17th century.
Full Story... - CBC

Tuesday, March 2, 2010
Compressed Sensing - no, it's not squeezing your friends. - Using sophisticated mathematics and computing algorithms has made dramatic differences when managing the large volumes of data common with medical imagery.
Full Story... - Wired.com

Wednesday, February 24, 2010
What do pi and Picasso have in common? - Mathematics helps uncover art fakes.
Full Story... - National Public Radio

Thursday, February 18, 2010
The computer is doomed. Maybe... - Super computers require lots of electricity. Is there enough electricity for tomorrow's super computers?
Full Story... - The Globe and Mail

Monday, February 8, 2010
What a difference a few percent make - Sovereign deficits are big news nowadays. Interesting table - treat the comments with caution.
Full Story... - The blog InfectiousGreed

Monday, February 1, 2010
From Fish to Infinity - What do Ernie from Sesame Street and Plato have in common? The NY Times has a new column on mathematics.
Full Story... - New York Times

Monday, January 25, 2010
Bad science, really bad science, out of this world bad science - No, we don't need aliens to explain this...
Full Story... - Bad Science Blog

Monday, January 18, 2010
So whose got the best job? - According to CareerCast.com, mathematicians and computer scientists hold 6 of the best 10 jobs.
Full Story - College News

Monday, January 11, 2010
Have women done it? - And how do we really know? Counting seems harder than we might think.
Full Story - The New York Times

Monday, January 04, 2010
Math and magic ... - Tricks of a mathemagician ...
Full Story - The New York Times

Monday, December 18, 2009
What famous mathematician was born on Christmas Day, 1642? - A brilliant talk given by John Maynard Keynes, the great economist, on the life of ....
Full Story - St. Andrew's University

Monday, November 23, 2009
10 jobs for math whizzes - Ever thought about being a cost estimator?
Full Story - CNN

Monday, November 16, 2009
The next generation ... - Computers from quantum mechanics.
Full Story - ScienceDaily

Monday, November 9, 2009
Martin Gardner: Puzzler Extraordinaire - A wolf, a goat and a head of cabbage need to be safely ferried across a river ...
Full Story - The New York Times

Monday, November 2, 2009
The good ship "Navigator of Connectivity" - And you thought connecting from your place was hard.
Full Story - The Guardian Weekly

Monday, October 26, 2009
Soft mathematics - How thinking mathematically about non-mathematical subjects makes sense.
Full Story - Mathematical Association of America

Monday, October 19, 2009
The best jobs belong to ... - According to CareerCast, four of the best five jobs in the US are for mathematicians and computer scientists. No surprise, really.
Full Story - The Wall Street Journal

Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Do the math to help the Vancouver Olympics - Simple percentages make transportation at the Olympics much easier.
Full Story - Globe and Mail (subscription necessary)

Monday, October 5, 2009
Solve the following word problem. You fall off a boat in the Pacific Ocean - Assuming you are wearing a life-jacket, where will you float?
Full Story - The New York Times

Monday, September 28, 2009
What's the hottest graphic novel in Europe? - A stellar cast of mathematicians, the quest for truth, villains - as a comic book?
Full Story - The New York Times