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Belphegor's prime number Belphegor's prime number is a palindromic prime number with a 666 hiding between 13 zeros and a 1 on either side. The ominous number can be abbreviated as 1 0(13) 666 0(13) 1, where the (13) denotes the number of zeros between the 1 and 666. Although he didn't "discover" the number, scientist and author Cliff Pickover made the sinister-feeling number famous when he named it after Belphegor (or Beelphegor), one of the seven demon princes of hell. The number apparently even has its own devilish symbol, which looks like an upside-down symbol for pi. According to...

This week, WBC fellow Jonathan Bartlett, along with co-author Asatur Zh. Khurshudyan, published a paper showing that elementary calculus contains a longstanding flaw that has been present for over a century. The paper was published in the peer-reviewed journal Dynamics of Continuous, Discrete & Impulsive Systems, Series A: Mathematical Analysis: Mathematical Analysis (DCDIS-A, for short). The journal has been published for a quarter of a century and many major universities across the United States subscribe to it. The flaw they discovered is one of notation. Now, you may be thinking, how can notation be wrong? Well, notation can be wrong...

Running for president in the age of celebrity is one of the fastest and surest ways to become a bona fide celebrity. Even failing to win his or her party’s nomination is still a win-win since the title “former presidential candidate” beefs up the résumé and increases name recognition, thus paying dividends with TV gigs, speaking engagements and book deals. There is little downside because running for commander-in-chief can pave the way for another elective office or an easier re-election to one’s current office. But best of all, history proves that an initial run for president increases the prospects of...

Yes, today is Pi Day! What is your favorite Pi math question?

Dozens of manuscripts belonging to Albert Einstein, many of them unseen in public before, have been unveiled by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. More than 110 new documents are now on display at the university, marking the 140th anniversary of Einstein's birth. It was donated by the Crown-Goodman Family Foundation and purchased from a private collector in North Carolina. The manuscripts contain an appendix to Einstein's article on Unified Theory ... The collection includes scientific work by the Nobel Prize winner that has never been published or researched.

Pasadena City College students are the top users in the entire country of a free online textbook resource called OpenStax. At PCC, over 46,000 students are using a free OpenStax textbook instead of the print editions, leading to an estimated savings of $4.2 million. OpenStax, a nonprofit based at Rice University in Texas, said PCC topped the list of schools nationwide where students take advantage of the free textbook technology for the 2017-2018 academic year. OpenStax textbooks are in use at 48 percent of colleges and universities in the U.S....

Three weeks into tax season, Americans' tax refunds are shrinking. The average refund issued through Feb. 15 was 16 percent smaller than this time last year, according to data released by the Internal Revenue Service. The average refund so far this year is $2,640, down from $3,169 in 2018. The number of taxpayers getting refunds is also sharply lower compared with last year -- down more than 26 percent, though the number of tax returns processed was down by only 6.6 percent. For now, experts caution against reading too much into the IRS figures, which can swing dramatically week to...

sadora Bielsky's tax bill this year brought her to tears. Last year, her family of four's refund topped $3,600. This year, the Colorado family owed in the thousands. "I plugged it all in and at first I thought oh my goodness we're getting $8,000 back and then I realized it was the wrong color … so I went back in and checked everything and then I started to cry," Bielsky said. Many Americans are learning their tax refund is not as much as they expected, or they are receiving a big tax bill. The average refund compared to last year...

The 10,958 Problem, based on work by Brazilian mathematician Inder J. Taneja. The 10,958 Problem | Numberphile | Featuring Matt Parker | YouTube | Published on Apr 18, 2017 | Video by Brady Haran

When Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez floated her idea (quasi-embraced by Sen. Kamala Harris) to raise the top marginal income tax rate to 70 percent on the richest Americans in order to pay for her "Green New Deal," I wrote that governmental confiscation of 70 cents on any dollar earned in a free society is unfair and immoral.  But would such a scheme at least make significant headway toward boosting federal revenues, commensurate with the orgy of new spending the Democratic Left is advocating?  Budget analyst Brian Riedl crunches the numbers for the Daily Beast and details the predictable answer to that...

Before we delve into her new "argument," I'd like to make a point about why the conservative commentariat sometimes seems fixated on Congresswoman-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.  First, she entered the national spotlight as a media fascination and darling -- a young woman of color who shook up the Democratic Party from the left by defeating an establishment fixture.  She wasn't randomly plucked from relative obscurity by right-wing writers or pundits for sport; she was elevated by a mainstream media that loves covering, and sympathizes with, rising liberal stars.  And please recall the DNC Chairman referring to her as "the future of...

Hi. Time for a non-political break from the usual anti-lib articles which we all love here. I have a math question for my genius Freepers because I know conservatives are smarter than idiot liberals so the question is " how many stupid liberals does it take to screw a light bulb? ANSWER: None, they think the light bulb will lead to climate change (drum beat) OK, that's not it (j/k) but here it is: I have a relative (self-made/taught/ no HS diploma but makes more than I do) who sells on an online platform like Ebay. She will sell fabrics...

You may not have heard of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, but, among anime fans at least, it’s a pretty big deal. Originally a series of light novels, it follows the adventures of typical high schooler Kyon and the time-travel alien ESP club he is forced to help create by his beautiful if eccentric friend, the titular Haruhi. Since its original run in 2003, it has spawned 10 additional volumes, a film adaptation, several video games, and even its own religion, Haruhiism. It was first adapted into an anime back in 2006. The show only lasted three months but there...

Puzzles9 shared a brain teaser with three pentagons, each with a set of five numbers. The middle pentagon is missing a number. To fill in the missing number, you must figure out the relationship between the numbers in the pentagons and continue the sequence.

“What he showed in the presentation is very unlikely to be anything like a proof of the Riemann hypothesis as we know it,” says Jørgen Veisdal, an economist at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim who has previously studied the Riemann hypothesis. “It is simply too vague and unspecific.” Veisdal added that he would need to examine the written proof more closely to make a definitive judgement. The Riemann hypothesis, one of the last great unsolved problems in math, was first proposed in 1859 by German mathematician Bernhard Riemann. It is a supposition about prime numbers, such...

CHARLOTTE, NC (WBTV) - Some North Carolina elementary school teachers were initially told they would lose their jobs if they didn't pass a Math test they call difficult and unfair. Teachers say they recently got a call from their school district informing them they have another year to pass the test. Hundreds of teachers have failed the test repeatedly. Teachers argue what's on the test has nothing to do with what they teach in a classroom for students in Kindergarten to 5th grade. "Never in a million years would we even come close to teaching some of the topics on...

The bar keeps dropping on state math exams — and critics are saying it’s because officials are desperate for high graduation rates. Kids only need to score a measly 30 percent on this month’s Algebra 1 Regents test to pass, according to new state guidelines. Students who manage just 26 out of 86 total points will get a heavily weighted score of 65 — the minimum required for passage. That’s the lowest standard since the state introduced the test four years ago.

(snip) Eight years after California adopted new standards designed to boost students’ critical thinking and analytical skills, it’s become clear that a critical group was left behind in the push to implement Common Core: parents. The good old days of memorizing math formulas or multiplication tables are gone. Instead, Common Core math requires students to show how they reason their way to the right answer. As a result, many parents say homework is far more complicated than it used to be. For example, the right answer to 3×5 isn’t just 15 anymore, as one popular social media post noted. It’s...

In much of the country, the stereotype that boys do better than girls at math isn’t true – on average, they perform about the same, at least through eighth grade. But there’s a notable exception. In school districts that are mostly rich, white and suburban, boys are much more likely to outperform girls in math, according to a new study from Stanford researchers, one of the most comprehensive looks at the gender gap in test scores at the school district level. The research, based on 260 million standardized test scores for third through eighth graders in nearly every district in...

By 2014, California was the top state in eighth-grade algebra enrollment. Common Core erased all those gains almost immediately ... Before Common Core came along, California parents, faculty, and officials spent years developing some of the best-ranked K-12 math requirements in the nation. One result of their careful work was more than tripling the number of eighth graders who ranked proficient in math, and quadrupling the number of eighth graders taking algebra. By 2014, California was the top state in the nation in eighth-grade algebra enrollment. That was the year Common Core went into place. It erased all those gains...