On March 11, 2004 a series of bombs exploded aboard four commuter trains in Madrid, Spain, killing 192 people and injuring 2050. The Spanish police recovered a bag containing detonating devices which had a latent fingerprint that the Spanish shared with the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation...

At present, at any rate, very little evidence exists that great mathematicians and calculating prodigies have been endowed with an exceptional neurobiological structure.  Like the rest of us, experts in arithmetic have to struggle with long calculations and abstruse mathematical concepts.  If they succeed,...

Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future. Common quotation, variously attributed to Yogi Berra, Niels Bohr, Mark Twain and others. Introduction In Isaac Asimov’s famous science fiction novel Foundation, a group of scientists in the distant future led by Hari Seldon discover a...

Henry Frankenstein: Look! It’s moving. It’s alive. It’s alive… It’s alive, it’s moving, it’s alive, it’s alive, it’s alive, it’s alive, IT’S ALIVE! Victor Moritz: Henry – In the name of God! Henry Frankenstein: Oh, in the name of God!...

The 2004 movie/documentary What the Bleep Do We Know? has a simple answer to life’s problems: Quantum Mechanics! Can’t get a date? The answer: Quantum Mechanics. Hate your job? The answer: Quantum Mechanics. Worried about the long term health effects of your prescription anxiety pills? ...

Hobbes: “A new decade is coming up.” Calvin: “Yeah, big deal! Hmph. Where are the flying cars? Where are the moon colonies? Where are the personal robots and the zero-gravity boots, huh? You call this a new decade?! You call this the future?? HA! Where are the rocket packs? Where are the...

“Our advice: Beware of geeks bearing formulas.” — Warren Buffett, Letter to Shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway, Reporting Huge Losses In the classic 1961 Disney science fiction comedy movie The Absent Minded Professor, Professor Ned Brainard of Medfield College of Technology has been struggling for...

The word “mathematics” comes from the Greek μάθημα (máthema) meaning lesson and the verb μαθαίνω (mathéno) meaning “to learn”. It could be argued that math anxiety is anxiety about learning in general but that’s probably stretching things a bit. Although math is...

During the seventeenth century, the physicist Isaac Newton conducted a series of experiments studying the properties of light. Newton encountered a puzzling enigma. He found that light behaved both like a particle and like a wave. Some of his experiments made the most sense if he interpreted light as a...

“It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short...