Mathematicians occupy an odd place in the public imagination, as objects of great curiosity and also great misunderstanding. TV and movies portray us as anything from eccentric to insane, though sometimes we get to solve crimes. But there is rather little public understanding of what mathematicians...

Imagine a multiverse, infinitely infinite.  There’s just infinity.  Or if you prefer, nothing.   There’s no space, no time, no matter, no energy.  There’s no structure whatsoever, and nothing “in” any of the universes that make up the multiverse.  it’s not even clear...

The New York Times Year in Review section always has some good ones. Some highlights for me from this year: Does feeling like a fraud make you act like one? Researchers gave experiment subjects designer-style sunglasses from boxes marked “authentic” or “counterfeit”. They then put...

We are living in an age of, amongst other things, excellent graphic novels. One shining example, which I have just finished reading, is LOGICOMIX, a graphic novel biography of mathematician and philosopher Bertrand Russell. (Side note: can a biography still be called a graphic novel? Our terminology may need...

The following question was given as a homework problem in a course I’m TAing: CNBC had an interesting program on the current financial crisis. They located one investor who noticed that since the late 1990’s housing prices have been growing 10 percent every year (that is, each year, the average...