#mathematics

The traveling salesman problem has been unsolved for decades — and the way mathematicians are finally making progress on it reveals something strange about the nature of difficulty itself.

A new proof about sloppy card shuffling quietly reveals something strange: randomness has a threshold, and crossing it looks nothing like you'd expect.

Alexander Grothendieck didn't solve math problems — he rebuilt the room they lived in.

Gödel didn't just find a flaw in mathematics — he built a trap out of language itself, and it's been sprung ever since.

The axiom of choice sounds obvious until you follow it to its conclusions — then you end up with a ball that can be decomposed and reassembled into two balls of the same size.

Ultrafinitism says infinity doesn't exist — and the most interesting thing about that position is what it forces you to build instead.

Knot theory sits at a strange intersection of mathematics and identity — a knot only becomes itself once you can't tell it apart from anything else.

Mathematical notation isn't just a way of writing down ideas — it's a way of having them.

A deceptively simple math problem about runners on a track, and what it means to be alone.