An automorphic form is, in the simplest sense, like a trigonometric function. Trigonometric functions are inescapable in both mathematics and physics, so it makes sense that we would see generalizations of them in physics applications... Strung Out on Automorphic Forms Holley Friedlander Dickinson College Automorphic forms are highly symmetric functionsRead More →
It turns out that the game with alternate moves can be converted into a game with just one move... Payoffs and strategies Bill Casselman University of British Columbia Payoffs and strategies In a recent Feature Column I discussed a basic search tool used by computers to explore options in playingRead More →
A natural question in the context of origami mathematics is: What if we make the paper infinitely large? Welcome to the Fold Sara Chari Saint Mary's College of Maryland Adriana Salerno Bates College and the National Science Foundation Origami—from the Japanese words for “fold” (oru) and “paper” (kami)—is the artRead More →
Suppose this blog’s editor Ursula and I want to create a shared secret to use as a password to access this blog post... Lattices, Plane and Not-So-Plane Courtney Gibbons Hamilton College In January 2023, Bill Casselman wrote a great column introducing readers to lattices that imagined them as vectors inRead More →
We see a distinct preference for denying the premise of the measurement rather than accepting a measured value of zero… Much Ado About Zero Anil Venkatesh Adelphi University Act NULLA1 It happened at the peak of remote instruction. I had just finished a Zoom session with my calculus students fromRead More →
Willa is an economist and Cara is a mathematician, so together they have decided to turn the problem of which game to play into a separate meta-game. Because they both love numbers, Willa and Cara start by creating matrices... Elliptic curves come to date night Ursula Whitcher Mathematical Reviews (AMS)Read More →
The number of comparisons is going to escalate quickly. If we have four flavors of ice cream, we go from Scenario 1 showing three significant variables in its model outputs to the rest of the scenarios only reporting one... Is this $p$-hacking? If you have to ask, it probably is.Read More →
Mathematics helps develop definitions to compare different means to make something better or more fair. But there are inherent limitations, expressed as mathematical impossibility theorems... Impossible? Joe Malkevitch York College (CUNY) Introduction When you got up from sleeping last night, what were the possibilities that you could achieve in theRead More →