It’s not often that 5-year-olds can grasp questions at the frontiers of computer science, but it can happen. Suppose, for instance, that a kindergartner named Alice has two apples, but she prefers ...

A new proof about prime numbers illuminates the subtle relationship between addition and multiplication — and raises hopes for progress on the famous abc conjecture. One morning last November, the ...

Little progress had been made in solving Ramsey problems since the 1930s. Now, researchers have found the answer to r(4,t), a longstanding Ramsey problem that has perplexed the math world for decades.

Imagine Jo: Everyone in Jo's life recognizes her as an outstanding problem solver. She's the type of person who seems capable ...

A mathematician who went from obscurity to luminary status in 2013 for cracking a century-old question about prime numbers now claims to have solved another. The problem is similar to—but distinct ...

A variation of a puzzle called the “pick-up sticks problem” asks the following question: If I have some number of sticks with random lengths between 0 and 1, what are the chances that no three of ...

The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. A new proof has brought mathematicians one step closer to understanding the hidden order of those “atoms of arithmetic,” the prime ...

Yesterday's edition of On Numbers told the unhappy story of America's construction slowdown since 2005. Today's version takes a shorter -- and more upbeat -- look at the same problem. On Numbers ...