Math

How many people will travel during a given week between two specific cities? Answering this question is important for many reasons, for example, to design efficient public transport infrastructures, or, as was the case during […]

When you look at your surrounding environment, it might seem like you’re living on a flat plane. After all, this is why you can navigate a new city using a map: a flat piece of […]

You can learn a lot from a little slime mold. For Nate Cira, assistant professor of biomedical engineering in Cornell Engineering, the tiny eukaryotic organism provided inspiration for modeling “traveling networks”—connected systems that move by […]

Doubly periodic weaves—entangled structures with repeating patterns in two independent directions—pose a mathematical challenge. Originally conceived to model real-world structures, such as woven textiles and molecular weaving of polymers, mathematicians have generalized the theory to […]

Elections are a well-documented example of collective human decision-making, with voting data available for elections globally over several decades. SFI Complexity Postdoctoral Fellow Aanjaneya Kumar, along with former colleagues at the Indian Institute of Science […]

A game of chess requires its players to think several moves ahead, a skill that computer programs have mastered over the years. Back in 1996, an IBM supercomputer famously beat the then world chess champion […]

As more consumers turn to subscription-based platforms, the distribution of revenue in streaming services has become a crucial issue in the digital economy. Content creators and artists argue that the current models are opaque, frequently […]

The math that describes the branching pattern of trees in nature also holds for trees depicted in art—and may even underlie our ability to recognize artworks as depictions of trees.This article was originally published on […]

In 1972, the US meteorologist Edward Lorenz asked a now-famous question: “Does the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas?”This article was originally published on this website.

During the Super Bowl, every decision matters. With millions of fans watching, the game often comes down to a single play call. And no call is more scrutinized than what a coach decides to do […]