All mainstream credit card numbers obey a mathematical trick designed to catch the most common typos. It’s called the Luhn algorithm, named after IBM researcher Hans Peter Luhn, who patented it in ...

Cathy O’Neil believes there is a dark side to numbers. A mathematician by training, she earned her doctorate at Harvard and went on to become a tenure-track professor at Barnard College. In 2007, ...

Home > Extreme Google Fed a Language Algorithm Math Equations. It Learned How to Solve New Ones. Computers fail at even simple math more often than many of us realize and that flaw is rooted in the ...

This summer, battle lines were drawn over a simple math problem: 8 ÷ 2(2 + 2) = ? If you divide 8 by 2 first, you get 16, but if you multiply 2 by (2 + 2) first, you get 1. So, which answer is right?

On a recent hike around the ruins of the St. Francis Dam disaster site about 40 miles from Downtown Los Angeles, with my archaeologist friend, John, we discussed the tarnished life of its builder and ...