All posts tagged: Math

Basketball can make you better at math

Basketball can make you better at math

Published by Jenni Sidey

Get the Popular Science daily newsletterđź’ˇ Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. By signing up, you confirm you are 16+, will receive newsletters and promotional content and agree to our Terms of Use and acknowledge the data practices in our Privacy Policy. You may unsubscribe at any time. Fractions are a difficult math concept for many children to learn, but pairing lessons with basketball may offer some help. After participating in an experimental workshop that combined education with shooting hoops, students in Denmark performed an average of 15 percent better in fraction tests than a control group that did not play basketball.. “I am convinced that sport and physical activity can open up mathematics for pupils who are not otherwise engaged by the subject,” explained University of Copenhagen sports exercise researcher Jacob Wienecke.Wienecke is also the co-author of an accompanying study on the fraction experiment published in the journal Educational Psychology Review. The project involved over 300 students between ages 11 and 13, who attended a one hour, once-a-week meetup that …

The Relational Math of Mind-Blowing Sex

The Relational Math of Mind-Blowing Sex

Published by Jenni Sidey

Co-authored with Galit Romanelli, M.A. Ori and Maya are doing great. They have been in therapy for a couple of months, working on the aftermath of opening their marriage. After more than 20 years together, feeling bored and wanting something else, they opened things up. It woke something in them, but, ultimately, brought more confusion and pain than connection. In therapy, we shifted the focus from how to have sex with other partners to how to make better love with each other. In session, Ori tells us they had a big fight last week. This time, instead of clamming up and not talking for three days, they did something different. They stayed and talked it out. The following day they practiced sofa time, a technique we teach couples to deepen their friendship. They talked more openly. They got more vulnerable. They understood each other. And then, Ori says, they had the best sex they’d had in a long time. Maya smiles and blushes slightly. He looks at us and says, “And I don’t know why.” …

How much does it cost to go to a World Cup game? We did the math

How much does it cost to go to a World Cup game? We did the math

Published by Sam Flores

If you want to attend one of the opening matches of the upcoming FIFA World Cup, hotels and tickets are still widely available. But depending on which match you want to attend, it could cost you roughly the same amount as a month of rent in Chicago. Subscribe to read this story ad-free Get unlimited access to ad-free articles and exclusive content. For the first time since 1994, the United States will host the World Cup. Eleven cities across the U.S. — as well as five in Mexico and Canada — will host the biggest sporting event in the world, with the soccer tournament kicking off on June 11 and running through July 19. Since tickets went on sale last year, there has been ongoing controversy surrounding the cost of attendance, from confusing (and expensive) ticket prices to high transit costs. NBC News analyzed how expensive it would be to attend the opening match in each U.S. city based on hotel and ticket prices. Hotel costs were determined based on a two-night stay at the …

UC Professors Demand Return Of SAT Scores Because STEM Students Can Barely Do Middle School Math

UC Professors Demand Return Of SAT Scores Because STEM Students Can Barely Do Middle School Math

Published by Jenni Sidey

A debate about the role standardized testing scores should play in a student’s academic future has been raging for years now. Much of this discussion has centered around how useful college entrance exams like the SAT and ACT are. Critics believe that the SAT is biased along lines of gender and race, so it does not provide an accurate look at students’ potential. This led some colleges to drop the SAT requirement for admissions, but University of California professors now think that was a huge mistake. Hundreds of UC professors feel like students are unprepared for their STEM courses, and that SAT scores could help gauge their readiness. In an open letter signed by 794 UC faculty members, professors argued that students taking their college classes are woefully unprepared for the math they need to do, with some even performing at a middle-school level. “Over the past five years, we have seen a widening divergence in mathematical preparation levels within the same classroom,” the letter reads. “This trend indicates that current admissions practices do not …

How you can help NASA (even if you failed math)

How you can help NASA (even if you failed math)

Published by Jenni Sidey

Get the Popular Science daily newsletterđź’ˇ Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. By signing up, you confirm you are 16+, will receive newsletters and promotional content and agree to our Terms of Use and acknowledge the data practices in our Privacy Policy. You may unsubscribe at any time. Attention creative souls! While NASA might feel like an exclusive den of scientists, engineers, and otherworldly athletes, the agency is reaching out to storytellers and artists via two new initiatives. “As NASA pushes the boundaries of exploration and innovation for the benefit of humanity, the agency is looking for partners to share mission stories covering Artemis Moon missions, nuclear propulsion, aeronautics, and more,” NASA wrote in a press release. Since “journalists” aren’t mentioned in either of these calls for creatives, it would appear that NASA is seeking other means to keep people talking about its missions.  Specifically, they are seeking proposals from creatives including documentarians, songwriters, storytellers, and poets for projects about missions including Artemis III in 2027 and Space Reactor-1 Freedom to …

Claude Mythos 1 Preview Leaked: Cybersecurity and Math Benchmarks

Claude Mythos 1 Preview Leaked: Cybersecurity and Math Benchmarks

Published by skeptic

The recent leak of Claude Mythos 1 has provided a rare look at Anthropic’s advanced AI model, sparking discussions about its potential applications and implications. In a detailed hands-on review, World of AI examines the leaked outputs, including standout examples like solving Erdos Problem 90, a challenging geometry problem and generating a Python-based visualization titled Saturn spaceship pie art. These examples highlight the model’s strengths in mathematical reasoning, creative problem-solving, and programming expertise, underscoring its potential to tackle complex, high-stakes challenges. Anthropic’s cautious approach to a possible public release reflects its focus on safety, making sure that such capabilities are deployed responsibly. Dive into this breakdown to explore how Claude Mythos 1 performed on the Exploit Bench, where it achieved a leading score of 69%, and what this means for its role in cybersecurity. You’ll also gain insight into its versatility across fields like research and development, enterprise systems, and cloud security, as well as its implications for developers navigating AI integration. This review offers a comprehensive look at the model’s potential impact while addressing …

Amazon Thinks the Future of Data Centers Depends on a Technical Problem It Just Solved

Amazon Thinks the Future of Data Centers Depends on a Technical Problem It Just Solved

Published by skeptic

Over time, the tech industry has developed and deployed variations on the fat-tree architecture. But the design has room for improvement. It’s generally reliable, but also rigid, inefficient, and requires complex cabling. As in, actual physical cables. If you’ve ever been in a data center or an office building’s server room, you’ve likely seen nests of colorful cables spilling out of metal racks. Cabling is one of the greatest costs in networking, Rehder says, and Amazon’s global data centers are currently connected with 20 million kilometers of fiber optic cables. That’s roughly the distance it would take to travel from Earth to the moon and back 25 times. In 2012, as the demand for cloud computing services was exploding, a group of researchers at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, including Godfrey, introduced a concept known as Jellyfish. Fixed network designs in use at the time were struggling to meet growing demand, so the researchers proposed a “high-capacity network interconnect which, by adopting a random graph topology, yields itself naturally to incremental expansion.” They believed this random …

University of California math professors demand return of SAT for STEM admissions

University of California math professors demand return of SAT for STEM admissions

Published by Sam Flores

More than 600 University of California faculty members, led by mathematicians at UC Berkeley, are calling on the system to reinstate standardized testing requirements for science, technology, engineering and mathematics applicants, saying that six years of test-free admissions has not reliably assessed readiness and professors are often teaching middle school math to incoming students. Without standardized testing in admissions, professors said they don’t know whether incoming students can handle college-level math. The open letter, addressed to top UC leaders, asks for SAT or ACT exams to be required beginning in fall 2027 and for STEM faculty to be given formal oversight of readiness standards in their majors. “We now observe preparation gaps so severe that instructors must reteach middle-school mathematics while simultaneously teaching the material students need for sciences, engineering, economics, and other quantitatively demanding fields,” they warned. Over three years — from fall 2021 to fall 2023 — the letter said, at least 20% of Berkeley first-semester calculus students who took a diagnostic exam showed deficits. “Basic mathematical fluency is analogous to literacy; without …

What AI Has and Hasn’t Solved Recently in Math

What AI Has and Hasn’t Solved Recently in Math

Published by Jenni Sidey

OpenAI recently announced that one of its AI models autonomously tackled a prominent open problem in mathematics associated with Hungarian mathematician Paul ErdĹ‘s’s Problem #90. It concerns the unit distance problem in discrete geometry. A minimum unit distance graph for n=16.Note the plethora of equilateral triangles. ErdĹ‘s’s problem #90 asks for the maximum number of unit distances that can occur amongn points in the plane. For small values of n, this problem is easily solved. For n is equal to 3, the answer is an equilateral triangle. For n = 4, the answer is a rhombus of two conjoined equilateral triangles. The problem gets more difficult as n increases. Getting past the hype First, let’s clear some possible misconceptions from the media. Contrary to any implication, the unit distance problem has not been solved.  In #90, ErdĹ‘s (1913–1996) believed his bound, an unproven educated hunch, was accurate. The OpenAI solution improved on that bound, but did not prove that that was the optimal solution. Open AI writes “This proof … marks the first time that …

Adults with better math skills rely less on the brain’s physical movement areas

Adults with better math skills rely less on the brain’s physical movement areas

Published by José Betancourt

A recent study published in the journal Cerebral Cortex suggests that adults who are better at math tend to rely less on the brain areas associated with physical movement when processing numbers. These findings provide evidence that as people develop advanced math skills, their brains shift toward more automatic and abstract ways of thinking about numbers. Number processing relies on multiple mental formats. Scientists describe a verbal format for number words, a visual format for written digits, and a semantic format for the actual meaning or quantity. In recent years, scientists have proposed that an embodied format also exists, where physical experiences like counting on fingers help shape how the brain understands quantities. To explore how these mental formats interact at different life stages, the authors aimed to understand how physical representations of numbers relate to formal math competence in both children and adults. Xueying Ren, a postdoctoral scholar in psychology and human development at Vanderbilt University’s Peabody College, explained the motivation behind the research. “While we know that number processing is foundational for mathematical …