Mathematically, the most intriguing of the new proposals use lattices for message encryption… What will they do when quantum computers start working? Bill Casselman University of British Columbia Commercial transactions on the internet are invariably passed through a process that hides them from unauthorized parties, using RSA public key encryptionRead More →
In 1915, the paper “Note on an Operation of the Third Grade” by Albert A. Bennett appeared in the Annals of Mathematics. A terse two-page note, it was largely neglected until the early 2000s… Hyperoperations, Distributivity, and the Unreasonable Effectiveness of Multiplication Anil Venkatesh Adelphi University Iterated Operations Everyone knowsRead More →
Social media platforms connect users into massive graphs, with accounts as vertices and friendships as edges... Predicting friendships and other fun machine learning tasks with graphs Noah Giansiracusa Bentley University Artificial intelligence (AI) breakthroughs make the news headlines with increasing frequency these days. At least for the time being, AIRead More →
What is the $E_8$ lattice that appears in Viazovska's proof? What makes it special? How do you use it to pack spheres? Eight-dimensional spheres and the exceptional $E_8$ Ursula Whitcher Mathematical Reviews (AMS) In Helsinki this summer, Ukrainian mathematician Maryna Viazovska was awarded a Fields Medal "for the proof thatRead More →
We can formulate this situation into an example of Simpson’s Paradox. When employee outcomes were examined overall, there was no evidence of discrimination between men and women. However, if employee outcomes were to be further broken down by race, there would have been a very clear discrepancy between the BlackRead More →
Many of the proposed strategies use the notions introduced by Claude Shannon to solve problems of communication… Wordle is a game of chance William Casselman University of British Columbia The game Wordle, which is found currently on the New York Times official Wordle site, can be played by anybody withRead More →
Studying supersymmetry in physically realistic situations requires a tremendous amount of physical and mathematical sophistication. We’re going to simplify as much as possible: all the way down to zero spatial dimensions! Designing supersymmetry Ursula Whitcher Mathematical Reviews (AMS) Mathematicians and physicists both love symmetry, but depending on who you’re talkingRead More →
A remarkable theorem involving decompositions is that if one has two plane simple polygons of the same area, it is possible to decompose either of the polygons into polygonal pieces that can be reassembled to form the other polygon… Geometric Decompositions Joe Malkevitch York College (CUNY) Introduction When looking atRead More →
When we start to think more about it, more questions arise. What makes a line “good”? How do we tell if a line is the “best”? The Origins of Ordinary Least Squares Assumptions Some Are More Breakable Than Others Sara Stoudt Bucknell University Introduction Fitting a line to a setRead More →
Rook Polynomials: A Straight-Forward Problem For an integer $k$, is it possible to place $k$ rooks on a chess board so that no piece sits on the same row or column as any others? We wouldn’t want them stepping on each others’ toes. Tamsyn Morrill Trine University In the gameRead More →