Start with a deck of cards. Before the trick, sneak a peek at the 10th card in the deck. Memorize it. Ask your volunteer to add the first and second digit of their number together. For instance, if he ...

Blending music with math learning can help children grasp numbers faster, remember concepts longer, and enjoy the process more. Research shows that rhythm, repetition, and melody enhance memory, ...

John Conway’s Game of Life, a famous cellular automaton, has been found to have periodic patterns of every possible length. In 1969, the British mathematician John Conway devised a beguilingly simple ...

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 ...