Archive

Neural networks and other forms of machine learning ultimately learn by trial and error, one improvement at a time.

If you cover a surface with tiles, repetitive patterns always emerge — or do they? In this week’s episode, mathematician Natalie Priebe Frank and co-host Janna Levin discuss how recent breakthroughs in tiling can unlock structural secrets in the natural world.

After decades of uncertainty, a motley team of programmers has proved precisely how complicated simple computer programs can get.

Susan Clark is helping to unravel the mysterious workings of the Milky Way’s magnetic field, a critical missing piece of the galactic puzzle.

Two mathematicians have proved a long-standing conjecture that is a step on the way toward finding the worst shape for packing the plane.

Three years ago, Google’s AlphaFold pulled off the biggest artificial intelligence breakthrough in science to date, accelerating molecular research and kindling deep questions about why we do science.

Computational complexity theorists have discovered a surprising new way to understand what makes certain problems hard.

Useful mathematical concepts, like the number line, can linger for millennia before they are rigorously defined.

How are scientists able to crack fundamental questions about nature and life? How does math make the complex cosmos understandable? In this episode, the physicist Nigel Goldenfeld and co-host Steven Strogatz explore the deep foundations of the scientific process.