Many years ago, a friend showed me this bit of mathematical trivia that thrilled us both no end: And then there’s the one I believed, for a while, was my own totally innovative discovery (it wasn’t).

John Conway’s Game of Life, a famous cellular automaton, has been found to have periodic patterns of every possible length. In 1969, the British mathematician John Conway devised a beguilingly simple ...

Frank A. Farris does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond ...

Mathematical patterns reveal profound truths about the universe and, surprisingly, about our inner lives as well. These five visual math concepts offer unique frameworks for understanding our behavior ...

Here’s a simple number game to play on a rainy day, or while sheltering in place. You and I take turns crossing out numbers from the list {1, 2, 3, …, 9}. The winner is the last person to cross out a ...

Imagine I present you with a line of cards labelled 1 through to n, where n is some incredibly large number. I ask you to remove a certain number of cards – which ones you choose is up to you, ...

McGill University provides funding as a member of The Conversation CA. McGill University provides funding as a member of The Conversation CA-FR. Architect and mathematician Christopher Alexander died ...