https://phys.org/science-news/mathematics en-us The latest news on mathematics, math, math science, mathematical science and math technology. Number theory, the study of the properties of positive integers, is perhaps the purest form of mathematics. At first sight, it may seem far too abstract to apply to the natural world. In fact, the influential American number theorist Leonard Dickson wrote, "Thank God that number theory is unsullied by any application." https://phys.org/news/2023-08-scientists-uncover-theory-evolutionary-genetics.html Mathematics Tue, 01 Aug 2023 12:26:44 EDT news610111601 Around the world, political violence increased by 27% last year, affecting 1.7 billion people. The numbers come from the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED), which collects real-time data on conflict events worldwide. https://phys.org/news/2023-08-scientists-method-armed-conflicts.html Mathematics Political science Tue, 01 Aug 2023 12:26:35 EDT news610111592 In addition to describing biological interactions, evolutionary theory has also become a valuable tool to make sense of the dynamics of social norms. Social norms determine which behaviors should be regarded as positive, and how community members should act towards each other. https://phys.org/news/2023-07-evolution-double-sided-social-norms-cooperative.html Mathematics Social Sciences Thu, 27 Jul 2023 12:05:18 EDT news609678315 In the quest to unravel the underlying mechanisms of natural systems, accurately identifying causal interactions is of paramount importance. Leveraging the advancements in time-series data collection through cutting-edge technologies, computational methods have emerged as powerful tools for inferring causality. https://phys.org/news/2023-07-gobi-breakthrough-package-inferring-causal.html Mathematics Tue, 25 Jul 2023 09:39:36 EDT news609496773 In the face of existential dilemmas that are shared by all of humanity, including the consequences of inequality or climate change, it is crucial to understand the conditions leading to cooperation. A new game theory model developed at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA) based on 192 stochastic games and on some elegant algebra finds that both cases—available information and the lack thereof—can lead to cooperative outcomes. https://phys.org/news/2023-07-game-theory-people-decisions-environments.html Mathematics Social Sciences Mon, 24 Jul 2023 09:31:05 EDT news609409862 Everyone knows that 2 + 2 = 4, but why do we have arithmetic in the first place, and why is it true? Researchers at the University of Canterbury have recently answered these questions by "reverse engineering" arithmetic from a psychological perspective. To do this, they considered all possible ways that quantities could be combined, and proved (for the first time in mathematical terms) that addition and multiplication are the simplest. https://phys.org/news/2023-07-psychological-arithmetic-biologically-based-natural-consequence.html Mathematics Social Sciences Tue, 18 Jul 2023 11:10:40 EDT news608897439 Life, from the perspective of thermodynamics, is a system out of equilibrium, resisting tendencies towards increasing their levels of disorder. In such a state, the dynamics are irreversible over time. This link between the tendency toward disorder and irreversibility is expressed as the 'arrow of time' by the English physicist Arthur Eddington in 1927. https://phys.org/news/2023-07-team-solution-temporal-asymmetry.html Mathematics Wed, 05 Jul 2023 10:44:52 EDT news607772689 It's a dilemma that many a regular bettor probably faces often—deciding when to place a sports bet. In a study entitled, "A statistical theory of optimal decision-making in sports betting," Jacek Dmochowski, Associate Professor in the Grove School of Engineering at The City College of New York, provides the answer. His original finding appears in the journal PLOS One. https://phys.org/news/2023-06-science-sports.html Mathematics Social Sciences Thu, 29 Jun 2023 10:51:11 EDT news607254669 Children do better at math when music is a key part of their lessons, an analysis of almost 50 years of research on the topic has revealed. https://phys.org/news/2023-06-combining-math-music-higher-scores.html Mathematics Education Thu, 29 Jun 2023 00:00:01 EDT news607180274 In a time of income inequality and ruthless politics, people with outsized power or an unrelenting willingness to browbeat others often seem to come out ahead. https://phys.org/news/2023-06-game-theory-bullies.html Mathematics Social Sciences Tue, 27 Jun 2023 13:57:04 EDT news607093021 Making history with 42 digits, scientists at Paderborn University and KU Leuven have unlocked a decades-old mystery of mathematics with the so-called ninth Dedekind number. https://phys.org/news/2023-06-ninth-dedekind-scientists-long-known-problem.html Mathematics Mon, 26 Jun 2023 15:25:04 EDT news607011901 Do you know someone who knows someone? We have all played this game, often to be amazed that despite the extreme scale of human society, random people can be linked through very small chains of acquaintances—typically, around six. Recently, a group of researchers from across the globe discovered that this magic of six degrees can be explained mathematically. The intriguing phenomenon, they show, is linked to another social experience we all know too well—the struggle of cost vs. benefit in establishing new social ties. https://phys.org/news/2023-06-veracity-degrees.html Mathematics Social Sciences Mon, 26 Jun 2023 13:11:32 EDT news607003887 On June 23, 1993, the mathematician Andrew Wiles gave the last of three lectures detailing his solution to Fermat's last theorem, a problem that had remained unsolved for three and a half centuries. Wiles' announcement caused a sensation, both within the mathematical community and in the media. https://phys.org/news/2023-06-mathematicians-bridges-discipline-fermat-theorem.html Mathematics Thu, 22 Jun 2023 16:54:13 EDT news606671649 In science, the explanation with the fewest assumptions is most likely to be true. Called "Occam's Razor," this principle has guided theory and experiment for centuries. But how do you compare between abstract concepts? https://phys.org/news/2023-06-sharpening-occam-razor-perspective-complexity.html Mathematics Wed, 14 Jun 2023 03:58:09 EDT news605933877 David Smith, a retired print technician from the north of England, was pursuing his hobby of looking for interesting shapes when he stumbled onto one unlike any other in November. https://phys.org/news/2023-06-uk-hobbyist-stuns-math-world.html Mathematics Sat, 10 Jun 2023 05:56:07 EDT news605595358 An international team led by researchers at Nankai University in China and at University of Zagreb in Croatia, along with team at the Institut national de la recherche scientifique (INRS) in Canada, led by Roberto Morandotti has made an important breakthrough in the study of topological phases. Their findings were recently published in Nature Physics. https://phys.org/news/2023-06-global-symmetry-topological-boundary-states.html Mathematics Thu, 08 Jun 2023 12:23:10 EDT news605445777 Cooperation is a guiding principle of everyday life. It's as simple as following the rules of the road when driving or holding a door for a stranger; cooperation is a fundamental aspect of human societies and has long intrigued evolutionary biologists. But how do people reach a consensus on whether, and with whom, to cooperate? https://phys.org/news/2023-06-exploring-community-based-social-norms-evolve.html Mathematics Social Sciences Thu, 08 Jun 2023 12:21:47 EDT news605445703 A George Washington University research team has created a novel formula that demonstrates how, why, and when hate speech spreads throughout social media. The researchers put forth a first-principles dynamical theory that explores a new realm of physics in order to represent the shockwave effect created by bigoted content across online communities. https://phys.org/news/2023-06-online-speech-shockwave-formula.html Mathematics Social Sciences Tue, 06 Jun 2023 16:50:41 EDT news605289039 Researchers at the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M) and the Universidad Complutense de Madrid (UCM) have discovered a phase shift between chaotic states that can appear in herds of animals and, in particular, in swarms of insects. This advance may help to better understand their behavior or be applied to the study of the movement of cells or tumors. https://phys.org/news/2023-06-butterfly-chaos-effect-swarms-herds.html Mathematics Mon, 05 Jun 2023 10:57:09 EDT news605181424 Mathematicians from Yorkshire University, the University of Cambridge, the University of Waterloo and the University of Arkansas have one-upped themselves by finding a close relative of "the hat," a unique geometric shape that does not repeat itself when tiled, that is a true chiral aperiodic monotile. David Smith, Joseph Samuel Myers, Craig Kaplan and Chaim Goodman-Strauss have published a paper outlining their new find on the arXiv preprint server. https://phys.org/news/2023-06-aperiodic-tile-hat-true-chiral.html Mathematics Fri, 02 Jun 2023 10:00:56 EDT news604918848 Homophily is the notion that humans tend to preferentially interact and connect with individuals who are like them in some way. In other words, it's the idea that "birds of a feather flock together." While traditional research focuses on measuring homophily from the perspective of two-way relationships, such as ones encoded by friendship links in a social network, many human interactions are inherently group interactions and standard tools for measuring homophily do not apply in these settings. https://phys.org/news/2023-05-gaining-deeper.html Mathematics Social Sciences Mon, 08 May 2023 11:28:04 EDT news602764082 It's often risky to introduce new products to the market. In fact, statistics show that between 40 to 90 percent of new products fail. A key component of product adoption is consumer psychology. While there are a few theories that attempt to explain why certain people are not likely to accept novelties, a new study takes a slightly different approach. https://phys.org/news/2023-05-mathematical-based-psychology-buy-trendy.html Mathematics Economics & Business Mon, 08 May 2023 10:42:43 EDT news602761358 Models based on the principles of statistical physics can provide useful insights into how languages change through contact between speakers of different languages. In particular, the analysis reveals how unusual linguistic forms are more likely to be replaced by more regular ones over time. https://phys.org/news/2023-04-statistical-physics-reveals-languages-evolve.html Mathematics Social Sciences Thu, 27 Apr 2023 13:09:03 EDT news601819741 A "window to evolution" has opened after mathematicians uncovered the universal explanatory framework for how molecules interact with one another to adapt to new and variable conditions while maintaining tight control over key survival properties. https://phys.org/news/2023-04-math-molecular-interactions-window-life.html Mathematics Thu, 27 Apr 2023 09:47:38 EDT news601807655 A pair of anthropologists at Tulane University has solved the mystery of the Mayan 819-day count, a type of ancient Mesoamerican calendar system. In their paper published in the journal Ancient Mesoamerica, John Linden and Victoria Bricker suggest that the calendar might be representing a much longer timescale than others had considered. https://phys.org/news/2023-04-anthropologist-pair-mystery-mayan-day.html Mathematics Archaeology Mon, 24 Apr 2023 12:50:40 EDT news601559435 Researchers use networks to model the dynamics of coupled systems ranging from food webs to neurological processes. Those models originally focused on pairwise interactions, or behaviors that emerge from interactions between two entities. But in the last few years, network theorists have been asking, what about phenomena that involve three or more? In medicine, antibiotic combinations may fight a bacterial infection differently than they would on their own. In ecology, survival strategies may arise from three competing species that aren't observable when looking at individual pairs. https://phys.org/news/2023-04-higher-order-interactions-synchronization.html Mathematics Thu, 20 Apr 2023 16:57:04 EDT news601228621 A moment's hesitation... Yes, a full stop here—but shouldn't there be a comma there? Or would a hyphen be better? Punctuation can be a nuisance; it is often simply neglected. Wrong! The most recent statistical analyses paint a different picture: punctuation seems to "grow out" of the foundations shared by all the (examined) languages, and its features are far from trivial. https://phys.org/news/2023-04-punctuation-literature-major-languages-intriguingly.html Mathematics Social Sciences Thu, 20 Apr 2023 14:25:04 EDT news601219501 Auditing practices from the finance industry can be adapted to identify academic fraud, according to new research by the University of St Andrews. https://phys.org/news/2023-04-accountants-scientists.html Mathematics Education Thu, 13 Apr 2023 15:54:04 EDT news600620042 The United States experiences a staggeringly high rate of gun homicides, but accurately predicting these incidents—especially on a monthly basis—has been a significant challenge, due to the lag in the release of official Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) firearm mortality data, which is a cornerstone of reliable gun research. https://phys.org/news/2023-04-statistical-accurately-monthly-gun-homicides.html Mathematics Political science Fri, 07 Apr 2023 11:07:04 EDT news600084421 University of Sussex mathematicians have developed the first ever mathematical model of how to reach sexual climax, as revealed in a new paper. https://phys.org/news/2023-04-sexual-satisfaction-math.html Mathematics Social Sciences Wed, 05 Apr 2023 15:34:04 EDT news599927641