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 →
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 →
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 →
Inevitably, I think back to my favorite result in mathematics: when Diaconis used the representation theory of the symmetric group to show us that psychologists just don’t get along… What I Think About When I Think About Voting Sarah Wolff Denison University It’s November. Here in Ohio, that means cozyRead More →
One of the fundamental forces in the universe is the weak force. The weak force is involved in holding atoms together or breaking them apart... Putting a period on mathematical physics Ursula Whitcher Mathematical Reviews (AMS) You've heard of periods at the ends of sentences and periods of sine waves.Read More →
There are other ways to compare rational numbers, especially if one happens to enjoy number theory... A Different Sense of Distance Maria Fox Oklahoma State University Dedicated to my Dad, Dr. Barry R. Fox. The idea of distance is central to so much of the mathematics we do and teachRead More →
Polynomials, it turns out, are useful for more than just input-output assignments! Perspectives on Polynomials (it’s a witch!) Courtney Gibbons Hamilton College It was a dark and stormy night… Okay, it was probably more like 3:30 in the afternoon on a crisp fall day back when I was teaching CalcRead More →
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 →