A year after he started his Ph.D. in mathematics at McGill University, Matt Bowen had a problem. “I took my qualifying exams and did absolutely horribly on them,” he said. Bowen was sure that his ...

An example of a linear sequence. A list of numbers or diagrams that are in a particular order is called a sequence close sequenceA sequence is a set of numbers that follow a certain rule. For example, ...

Why do humans love to look at patterns? I can only guess, but I’ve written a whole book about new mathematical ways to make them. In Creating Symmetry, The Artful Mathematics of Wallpaper Patterns, I ...

Remember the graph paper you used at school, the kind that’s covered with tiny squares? It’s the perfect illustration of what mathematicians call a “periodic tiling of space”, with shapes covering an ...

Imagine I present you with a line of cards labelled 1 through to n, where n is some incredibly large number. I ask you to remove a certain number of cards – which ones you choose is up to you, ...