Mathematics
hideMathematics is the science and study of quantity, structure, space, and change. Mathematicians seek out patterns, formulate new conjectures, and establish truth by rigorous deduction from appropriately chosen axioms and definitions.
There is debate over whether mathematical objects such as numbers and points really exist or whether they are manmade. The mathematician Benjamin Peirce called mathematics "the science that draws necessary conclusions". Albert Einstein, on the other hand, stated that "as far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality."
Through the use of abstraction and logical reasoning, mathematics evolved from counting, calculation, measurement, and the systematic study of the shapes and motions of physical objects. Practical mathematics has been a human activity for as far back as written records go (see: History of Mathematics). Rigorous arguments first appeared in Greek mathematics, most notably in Euclid's Elements. Mathematics continued to develop, in fitful bursts, until the Renaissance, when mathematical innovations interacted with new scientific discoveries, leading to an acceleration in research that continues to the present day.
Today, mathematics is used throughout the world as an essential tool in many fields, including natural science, engineering, medicine, and the social sciences. Applied mathematics, the branch of mathematics concerned with application of mathematical knowledge to other fields, inspires and makes use of new mathematical discoveries and sometimes leads to the development of entirely new disciplines. Mathematicians also engage in pure mathematics, or mathematics for its own sake, without having any application in mind, although practical applications for what began as pure mathematics are often discovered later.
For more information about Mathematics, read the full article at
Wikipedia.
This text uses material from Wikipedia and is available under the GNU Free Documentation License.
News tagged with mathematics
New formula helps gauge the winds of change
Jan 27, 2010 |
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The Greek philosopher Heraclitus said that change is the only constant. People change, organizations change, the way people and institutions interact changes over time. Change affects social interactions and the natural world, ...
Elementary school women teachers transfer their fear of doing math to girls
Other Sciences / Social Sciences
Jan 25, 2010 |
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Female elementary school teachers who are anxious about math pass on to female students the stereotype that boys, not girls, are good at math. Girls who endorse this belief then do worse at math, research at the University ...
Researchers develop new method of quantitative art authentication
Technology / Computer Sciences
Jan 08, 2010 |
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(PhysOrg.com) -- Dartmouth researchers Daniel Graham, James M. Hughes, and Dan Rockmore are combining their expertise in brain science, computer science, and mathematics to analyze a series of drawings from ...
New record in the area of prime number decomposition of cryptographically important numbers
Jan 08, 2010 |
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An international team of scientists from EPFL (Switzerland), INRIA (France), NTT (Japan), CWI (The Netherlands) and Bonn University (Germany), has obtained the prime factors of the RSA challenge number RSA-768, using the ...
Math goes viral: Researchers make math and science real for high-school students
Other Sciences / Social Sciences
Dec 14, 2009 |
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At least a dozen Alberta high-school calculus classrooms were exposed to the West Nile virus recently.
Mathematical models key to tracking gossip, terrorists
Dec 09, 2009 |
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(PhysOrg.com) -- Thanks to the Internet and online social networks (OSNs) news and gossip now spread literally like wildfire -- uncontrollably and seemingly without any order. But according to one Ryerson ...
Active hearing process in mosquitoes
Nov 20, 2009 |
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A mathematical model has explained some of the remarkable features of mosquito hearing. In particular, the male can hear the faintest beats of the female's wings and yet is not deafened by loud noises.
Mathematics prize goes to University of Chicago's Hannah Alpert
Nov 18, 2009 |
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(PhysOrg.com) -- The Association for Women in Mathematics has named Hannah Alpert, a third-year mathematics major at the University of Chicago, a co-winner of the 2010 Alice T. Schafer Prize for excellence in mathematics ...
Putting math problems in proper order
Nov 17, 2009 |
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Mathematics is driven by the quest to solve problems and today the American Institute of Mathematics (AIM) announces a new tool to help attack those questions. Research problems can take decades or centuries to answer, with ...
What computer science can teach economics
Technology / Computer Sciences
Nov 09, 2009 |
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(PhysOrg.com) -- Computer scientists have spent decades developing techniques for answering a single question: How long does a given calculation take to perform? Constantinos Daskalakis, an assistant professor ...
P vs. NP -- The most notorious problem in theoretical computer science remains open
Technology / Computer Sciences
Oct 29, 2009 |
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In the 1995 Halloween episode of The Simpsons, Homer Simpson finds a portal to the mysterious Third Dimension behind a bookcase, and desperate to escape his in-laws, he plunges through. He finds himself wander ...
One tonne 'Baby' goes mobile
Oct 27, 2009 |
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(PhysOrg.com) -- It took a one-tonne computer the size of a room to run a simple mathematics program in 1948 - but now computer scientists have made it available on your mobile.
A trillion triangles: New computer methods reveal secrets of ancient math problem
Sep 22, 2009 |
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Mathematicians from North America, Europe, Australia, and South America have resolved the first one trillion cases of an ancient mathematics problem. The advance was made possible by a clever technique for ...
K-12 education should include engineering
Other Sciences / Social Sciences
Sep 08, 2009 |
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The introduction of K-12 engineering education has the potential to improve student learning and achievement in science and mathematics, increase awareness about what engineers do and of engineering as a potential career, ...
New breakthrough in bubble research
Sep 02, 2009 |
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A researcher from the University of Bath has found a new approach to an old geometric problem of modelling the most efficient way of packing shapes to form a foam.
