“If you are a mathematician,” one of the world’s leading mathematicians recently wrote, “you may want to make sure you are sitting down before reading further.” And you’ll definitely need to sit down ...

Every year, the countries competing in the International Mathematical Olympiad arrive with a booklet of their best, most original problems. Those booklets get shared among delegations, then quietly ...

If you have encountered the error message “There’s a problem with this formula” in Microsoft Excel, you are not alone. Many users report this error appearing ...

One idle evening last October, Mehtaab Sawhney took up an old pastime. He began perusing the website erdosproblems.com, an updated record of the 1,179 conjectures left behind by the eccentric and ...

What are the most pressing global crises in 2026? Each year, the International Rescue Committee’s (IRC) Emergency Watchlist identifies the countries at greatest risk of new or worsening humanitarian ...

Five years ago, mathematicians Dawei Chen and Quentin Gendron were trying to untangle a difficult area of algebraic geometry involving differentials, elements of calculus used to measure distance ...

Imagine Jo: Everyone in Jo's life recognizes her as an outstanding problem solver. She's the type of person who seems capable of almost anything. Jo excels at intuitive problem-solving. Over her life, ...

Have you ever crafted the perfect Excel formula, only to be greeted by the dreaded #VALUE! error instead of the seamless results you expected? It’s a frustrating ...

Differential equations are fundamental tools in physics: they are used to describe phenomena ranging from fluid dynamics to general relativity. But when these equations become stiff (i.e. they involve ...