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The Alabama state legislature has voted to change the value of the mathematical constant pi from 3.14159 to the 'Biblical value' of 3.0.

Student Recites 8,784 Digits of Pi Wed Mar 15, 10:02 PM ET SALEM, Va. - A high school student Tuesday recited 8,784 digits of Pi — the non-repeating and non-terminating decimal — likely placing him among the top Pi-reciters in the world. ADVERTISEMENT Gaurav Rajav, 15, had hoped to recite 10,790 digits and set a new record in the United States and North America. But he remembered enough to potentially place third in national and North American Pi recitation and 12th in the world. His ranking should be verified by the Pi World Ranking List within two months. "I'm kind...

God by the NumbersCoincidence and random mutation are not the most likely explanations for some things.by Charles Edward White Math and theology have had a long and checkered relationship. The Babylonians and Mayans both associated numbers with God. In fact, both societies named their gods with numbers. The Mayans used 13 and the Babylonians used 60. In the Greek world, followers of Pythagoras prayed to the first 4 numbers and thought they were the creator. On the other hand, in the 18th century, the French mathematician Laplace told Napoleon he had no need of God even as a hypothesis, and...

PALO ALTO, Calif. -- Two Palo Alto High School students were arrested after one allegedly sold a handgun to the other during math class, police said Friday. A student reported seeing a senior sell the .22-caliber handgun to a sophomore just before lunch Thursday, said Marianna Villaescusa, a Palo Alto police detective. The sophomore was later arrested at home, where police confiscated an unloaded handgun, Villaescusa said. "He thought it would be something cool to have," Villaescusa said. "But he had no intention of using it against anybody at the school." The senior accused of selling the gun told police...

Published online: 28 February 2006; | doi:10.1038/news060227-3 Were ancient Minoans centuries ahead of their time? Unprecedented mathematical knowledge found in Bronze Age wall paintings. Philip Ball Did the Minoans understand the Archimedes' spiral more than 1,000 years before him? A geometrical figure commonly attributed to Archimedes in 300 BC has been identified in Minoan wall paintings dated to over 1,000 years earlier. The mathematical features of the paintings suggest that the Minoans of the Late Bronze Age, around 1650 BC, had a much more advanced working knowledge of geometry than has previously been recognized, says computer scientist Constantin Papaodysseus of...

It all started with Elvis. In 2003, mathematician Tim Pennings of Hope College in Holland, Mich., revealed to the world that his Welsh corgi, Elvis, appears to be solving a calculus problem when finding the optimal path to fetch a ball. In this case, optimal path means minimizing travel time. When Elvis and Pennings go to the beach, they always play fetch. Standing at the water's edge, Pennings throws a tennis ball out into the waves, and Elvis eagerly retrieves it. When Pennings throws the ball at an angle to the shoreline, Elvis has several options. He can run along...

It was 9:45 a.m. on a Wednesday morning. Jane Reiser's mathematics class in Room 18 was stuffed with sixth- and seventh-graders. There were 32 of them, way above the national class size average of 25. Every seat was filled -- 17 girls, 15 boys, all races, all learning styles. A teacher's nightmare. And yet, despite having so many students, Reiser's class was humming, with everybody paying attention. She held up a few stray socks to introduce a lesson on probabilities with one of those weird questions that interest 11- and 12-year-olds: If you reach into your sock drawer in the...

WASHINGTON - Science and math have zoomed to the top of the nation's education agenda. Yet Amanda Cook, a parent of two school-age girls, can't quite see the urgency. "In Maine, there aren't many jobs that scream out 'math and science,'" said Cook, who lives in Etna, in the central part of the state. Yes, both topics are important, but "most parents are saying you're better off going to school for something there's a big need for." Nationwide, a new poll shows, many parents are content with the science and math education their children get — a starkly different view...

How babies do maths at 7 months Basic numerical ability predates speech Babies have a rudimentary grasp of maths long before they can walk or talk, according to new research. By the age of seven months infants have an abstract sense of numbers and are able to match the number of voices they hear with the number of faces they see. The research could be useful in devising methods for teaching basic maths skills to the very young, say researchers in the US. The study is published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Look and listen Adults can...

The only reason I passed algebra is because my mother literally sat with me every night in seventh grade as I wailed and wept over my cruel algebra homework, which she understood quite well but I never really did. (So much for the notion that all math-deficient girls need is math-whiz female role models.) I managed to keep the basic facts in my head just long enough to get a C in the class and do well enough on the SATs a few years later to get into UCLA, and that was the end of my algebraic education. In those...

A U.S. Justice Department investigation into hiring practices at the Virginia Beach Police Department has concluded that a math exam given to recruits discriminates against blacks and Hispanics. The math test is one of a handful of separately times and scored components of the National Police Officer Selection Test used to screen and select entry-level officers. The investigation found that between 2002 and 2005, about 85 percent of white applicants passed the math test, while 66 percent of Hispanic applicants and 59 percent of blacks passed. Virginia Beach demands that applicants score at least 70 percent to pass, which adversely...

Millennium Problems In order to celebrate mathematics in the new millennium, The Clay Mathematics Institute of Cambridge, Massachusetts (CMI) has named seven Prize Problems. The Scientific Advisory Board of CMI selected these problems, focusing on important classic questions that have resisted solution over the years. The Board of Directors of CMI designated a $7 million prize fund for the solution to these problems, with $1 million allocated to each. During the Millennium Meeting held on May 24, 2000 at the Coll¨¨ge de France, Timothy Gowers presented a lecture entitled The Importance of Mathematics, aimed for the general public, while John...

It seemed an odd pairing— the President of the United States and a senior from Rio Rancho High School. But 18-year-old Nicole Lopez stole the show Friday with her candor and eloquence on how science and math had given her purpose. Awesome and fantastic were two of the words President Bush used to describe what he heard from Lopez. "You also just described the true strength of the country," Bush told Lopez. Lopez was one of six panelists at the president's roundtable on American Competitiveness, held at Intel. She was, by far, the youngest and the least experienced, but she...

For Immediate ReleaseOffice of the Press SecretaryFebruary 4, 2006 President's Radio Address      Audio      THE PRESIDENT: Good morning. This week in the State of the Union address, I set forth my American Competitiveness Initiative. This plan will help our Nation to compete with confidence, raise the standard of living for our families, and generate new jobs for our citizens. Generations of risk-takers, inventors, and visionaries have made America the world's most prosperous and innovative nation. Just 25 years ago, most Americans used typewriters instead of computers, rotary phones instead of cell phones, and bank tellers instead of ATMs. Today America...

E-mail Author Send to a Friend Version February 02, 2006, 8:26 a.m. A Standard Problem A federal problem. By Chester E. Finn Jr. & Michael J. Petrilli President Bush's revamped second-term education agenda came into sharper focus on Tuesday night: Improve math and science achievement. This quest, however, while well intended and much needed, is likely to be impeded by the chief legacy of the president's own first-term education agenda: the No Child Left Behind Act. The American math and science crisis is the source of well-warranted anxiety about our economic competitiveness in a "flattening" and globalized world. It...

A highly unusual break-in at a grammar school in Klæbu resulted in a bit of mental exercise. The burglar(s) did not appear to be out after material gain. Instead of stealing, the intruder(s) sat down and began to solve the math problems intended for third grade students, newspaper Adresseavisen reports. According to local law enforcement officials a good job was done and all of the problems were solved correctly. There has been nothing reported missing or stolen from the school building and it remains a mystery how the intruder or intruders gained access to the school.

WASHINGTON - After a series of reports warning of the growing economic threat from China and India, ``competitiveness'' has become the latest catch-word of Silicon Valley's high-tech industry. President Bush elevated the issue for the nation Tuesday, announcing a decadelong ``American Competitiveness Initiative'' that would pour $136 billion into scientific research and the promotion of math and science education. --snip-- High-tech leaders praised the proposal Tuesday night. ``I was heartened by the amount of time he spent talking about competitiveness,'' said Carl Guardino, head of the Silicon Valley Leadership Group. ``To hear him focus on math and science, especially in...

Jan. 16, 2006 issue - The surest, quickest way to add quality to primary and secondary education would be addition by subtraction: Close all the schools of education. Consider The Chronicle of Higher Education's recent report concerning the schools that certify America's teachers. Many education schools discourage, even disqualify, prospective teachers who lack the correct "disposition," meaning those who do not embrace today's "progressive" political catechism. Karen Siegfried had a 3.75 grade-point average at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, but after voicing conservative views, she was told by her education professors that she lacked the "professional disposition" teachers need. She...

When Republican senators quietly tucked a major new student aid program into the 774-page budget bill last month, they not only approved a five-year, $3.75 billion initiative. They also set up what could be an important shift in American education: for the first time the federal government will rate the academic rigor of the nation's 18,000 high schools. The measure, backed by the Bush administration and expected to pass the House when it returns next month, would provide $750 to $1,300 grants to low-income college freshmen and sophomores who have completed "a rigorous secondary school program of study" and larger...

Amazonian hunter-gatherers who lack written language and who have never seen a math book score highly on basic tests of geometric concepts, researchers said on Thursday in a study that suggests geometry may be hard-wired into the brain. Adults and children alike showed a clear grasp of concepts such as where the center of a circle is and the logical extension of a straight line, the researchers report in this week's issue of the journal Science. Stanislas Dehaene of the College de France in Paris and colleagues tested 14 children and 30 adults of an Amazonian group called the Munduruku,...