Content about “

editorial

”

When Kurt Gödel published his incompleteness theorem in 1931, the mathematical community was stunned: using maths he had proved that there are limits to what maths can pr

To arm or to disarm? This is the question in Phil Wilson's article, which explores the maths behind a cold war in slug world.

Proof that f(y) is acceleratingly increasing and g(x) is deceleratingly increasing

First, draw yourself a graph to show that only acceleratingly increasing curves starting from a point x₀ (which is strictly greater than zero) have the following property:

Increasing the probability p(r)

If p(r) is increased, then a smaller value of x is given by the formula for x_r. And when x_r decreases and moves to the left, then so does the curve f(y), since it lies to the left of the point (x_r, y_r).

Return to the article

Number guessing puzzles

The first beautiful puzzle was by Yukio Yamamoto in Japan:

If you multiply two five digit numbers you can get the answer 123456789. Can you guess the two five digit numbers?

Number guessing puzzles

The first beautiful puzzle was by Yukio Yamamoto in Japan:

If you multiply two five digit numbers you can get the answer 123456789. Can you guess the two five digit numbers?

Kurt Gödel, who would have celebrated his 100th birthday next year, showed in 1931 that the power of maths to explain the world is limited: his famous incompleteness theorem proves mathematically that maths cannot prove everything.

Most of us are aware that Einstein proved that everything was relative ... or something like that. But we go no further, believing that we aren't clever enough to understand what he did.