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A new mathematical model reveals the tactics that a small number of interlopers can use to seize power. How is it possible for a small number of newcomers to displace a well-established group of leaders? That's not just a question for military organizations wanting to overthrow governments; it's a question for political parties controlling national debates, new products displacing well-established market leaders, and flocking birds following leaders to new food sources. Social scientists have studied the nature of effective leadership for centuries with limited success. Physicists, on the other hand, are new to the party, which gives them a chance...

The first math tutoring session with my daughter and her friend Laura had ended. I sat in the dining room, slumped in my chair. "You look sick," my wife said. "I am," I said. My daughter—subjected to the vagaries of Everyday Mathematics, a math program her school had selected and put in effect when she was in the third grade—was having difficulty with key concepts and computations. She was now in 6th grade, and with fractional division, percentages and decimals on the agenda, I wanted to make sure she mastered these things. So, near the beginning of 6th grade, I...

Math theories may hold clues to origin, future of life in universe June 9th, 2009 How did we get here and where are we headed? These are some of life's biggest questions. To get the answers, one Kansas State University professor is doing the math. Louis Crane, K-State professor of mathematics, is studying new theories about why the universe is the way it is. He has a grant from the Foundational Questions Institute to study new approaches to the quantum theory of gravity, his primary research area as both a mathematician and a physicist. Crane hopes to uncover implications of...

Math students in this high-performing school district used to rush through their Algebra I textbooks only to spend the first few months of Algebra II relearning everything they forgot or failed to grasp the first time. So the district’s frustrated math teachers decided to rewrite the algebra curriculum, limiting it to about half of the 90 concepts typically covered in a high school course in hopes of developing a deeper understanding of key topics. Last year, they began replacing 1,000-plus-page math textbooks with their own custom-designed online curriculum; the lessons are typically written in Westport and then sent to a...

Paper art can be traced back to Japan, where it originated over a thousand years ago. From complex paper cutting to book carving, this is an ever expanding area of design that is hardly talked about. These intricate paper designs grace museums and exhibitions throughout the world and is becoming yet another exciting medium of expression for many designers. Some of the artists featured here use simple materials, such as A4 printing paper, while others resort to unexpected materials, such as actual books, as their prime materials. In this article, we’ll take a look at 13 remarkable artists and showcase...

A 16-year-old Iraqi immigrant living in Sweden has cracked a maths puzzle that has stumped experts for more than 300 years, Swedish media reported Thursday. In just four months, Mohamed Altoumaimi has found a formula to explain and simplify the so-called Bernoulli numbers, a sequence of calculations named after the 17th century Swiss mathematician Jacob Bernoulli, the Dagens Nyheter daily said. Altoumaimi, who came to Sweden six years ago, said teachers at his high school in Falun, central Sweden were not convinced about his work at first.

An Iraqi-born 16-year-old reportedly has cracked a math puzzle that has gone unsolved for over 300 years. Mohamed Altoumaimi, who immigrated to Sweden six years ago, took only four months to find a formula that explains a sequence of calculations known as the Bernoulli numbers, a code that had stumped some of the best experts in the field, Agence France-Presse reported.

MALDEN, Mass. (WPRI) - According to state education officials, nearly three-quarters of the people who took the state elementary school teacher’s licensing exam this year failed the new math section. The Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education is releasing the results Tuesday. They say that only 27 percent of the more than 600 candidates who took the test passed. The test was administered in March of this year. The teacher’s licensing exam tested potential teachers on their knowledge of elementary school mathematics. This included geometry, statistics, and probability. Education Commissioner Mitchell Chester was not surprised by the results. He...

The online 'computational knowledge engine' calculates answers, unlike Google, which searches for information that already exists.How long does it take to get to Saturn at, say, the speed of light? With Wolfram Alpha, the online "computational knowledge engine" that launched Monday, the answer -- 75 minutes -- can be found in a fraction of a second. Web users can submit customized questions to the service, and Wolfram Alpha will try to work out the answer on the fly. The chance that a healthy 35-year-old woman will contract heart disease in the next 10 years? One in 167. The temperature in...

In a recent study, Bartolo Luque and Lucas Lacasa of the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid in Spain have discovered a new pattern in primes that has surprisingly gone unnoticed until now. They found that the distribution of the leading digit in the prime number sequence can be described by a generalization of Benford’s law. In addition, this same pattern also appears in another number sequence, that of the leading digits of nontrivial Riemann zeta zeros, which is known to be related to the distribution of primes. Besides providing insight into the nature of primes, the finding could also have applications...

An interesting and shall we say ‘odd’ excuse has been found for celebrating the seventh of may! The man to do so is none other than Ron Gordon, the founder of ’square root day’! Gordon is a math teacher from the Redwood City,California and has pointed out that today’s date, written in the American format, 5/7/09, is one among six in this century. Gordon finds the day a perfectly odd, excuse to celebrate the day with some odd celebration! It is indeed an interesting numerical sequence, but Gordon is so excited that he is actually offering a prize of 5-7-9...

TRURO — Voters narrowly approved one of four zoning amendments late Tuesday night at the annual town meeting. But town officials were still looking at the exact vote count on that article yesterday. In a vote of 136 to 70, voters passed a new time limit on how quickly a cottage colony, cabin colony, motel or hotel can be converted to condominiums. The new limit requires that those properties be in operation for three years before being converted to condominiums. The idea behind the zoning amendment is to slow the pace of condominium development in Truro and preserve more affordable...

It's Friday at Florida International University, which means a few things for Sky Choi: physics lab, Calculus II -- and a trip to the game room. For this 12-year-old, the youngest student ever to attend FIU, college is a long-awaited challenge and a daily adventure. ''We have fun here,'' he said as he prepared to start a work sheet on pistons, gases, and pressure with his lab partners. Welcome to the world of Sky, who is taking a full course load of physics, calculus, and Chinese language classes at the university -- and still finds time to play pool and...

whitefox writes "The scoop from CNet is that 'The US House of Representatives on Wednesday approved a resolution introduced two days earlier that designates March 14, 2009 (3/14, get it?) as National Pi Day. It urges schools to take the opportunity to teach their students about Pi and "engage them about the study of mathematics."' The resolution is available online. I doubt it'll ever become a national holiday, but the Pi string in the article is pretty cool in a nerdy sort of way."

Pi, Greek letter (pi), is the symbol for the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. Pi = 3.1415926535... Pi Day is celebrated by math enthusiasts around the world on March 14th.

Ya can't make it up: House praises pi By: David Rogers March 12, 2009 05:02 PM EST With the world swirling about it, the House took a moment Thursday to honor pi, the Greek letter symbolizing that great constant in mathematics representing the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. An irrational number that has been calculated to more than 1 trillion digits, pi is a concept not totally foreign to today’s Washington. But in this case, the goal was to promote efforts by the National Science Foundation to improve math education in the United States,...

3 squared = 9

REDWOOD CITY, Calif. – Dust off the slide rules and recharge the calculators. Square Root Day is upon us. The math-buffs' holiday, which only occurs nine times each century, falls on Tuesday — 3/3/09 (for the mathematically challenged, three is the square root of nine). "These days are like calendar comets, you wait and wait and wait for them, then they brighten up your day — and poof — they're gone," said Ron Gordon, a Redwood City teacher who started a contest meant to get people excited about the event. The winner gets, of course, $339 for having the biggest...

Watered down by fuzzy math, "whole language" reading and feel-good grading, public school instruction isn't what it used to be. Therein lies a great profitmaking opportunity: Supply the education that schools don't. Kumon, a Japanese firm that has been selling afterschool tutoring in its home country for half a century, broke into the U.S. market in 1983 and finds no shortage of customers here. Kumon now has 1,300 centers and 194,000 students in the U.S., double its enrollment in 2001. That puts it well ahead of its two main competitors, SylvanLearning and Huntington Learning Center. Most Kumon students are between...

From Sacramento -- The math seems pretty simple. But apparently it's too rigorous for many Republican politicians. To avoid raising taxes and still balance the books in Sacramento, you'd have to virtually shut down state government.