Srinivasa Ramanujan grew up in southern India with almost no formal education, but his mind never stopped creating mathematics. Using nothing but a single outdated textbook, he taught himself advanced ...

Some problems don’t always wait for parts; they meet a toolbox, a junk drawer, and a brain that refuses to quit. That’s where the best DIY shows up: fast, clever, and just odd enough to work. These ...

A group of math teachers in Tucson, Arizona, came under fire for their Halloween costumes this weekend. The teachers’ bloodied white t-shirts with the phrase “Problem solved” written across the chest ...

You probably don’t need more time. By Jancee Dunn When I look back on all the major decisions I’ve dithered over, I could scream. It took me a decade to commit to becoming a parent. I wavered for a ...

An error has occurred. Please try again. With a Centralmaine.com subscription, you can gift 5 articles each month. It looks like you do not have any active ...

What if the next new mathematical discovery didn’t come from a human mind, but from an AI? Imagine a machine not just crunching numbers but proposing original solutions to problems that have baffled ...

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 ...

Using an advanced Monte Carlo method, Caltech researchers found a way to tame the infinite complexity of Feynman diagrams and solve the long-standing polaron problem, unlocking deeper understanding of ...

Too many companies launch new products or services without a process for deeply understanding what their customers truly need. They make assumptions, rely on limited feedback, or develop ideas based ...

As quantum computing develops, scientists are working to identify tasks for which quantum computers have a clear advantage over classical computers. So far, researchers have only pinpointed a handful ...

In May 2025, a claim (archived) circulated online that the tech entrepreneur and former Trump adviser Elon Musk solved an "unsolvable" math problem after a Harvard professor called him "rich but dumb.