A shard of smooth bone etched with irregular marks dating back 20,000 years puzzled archaeologists until they noticed something unique – the etchings, lines like tally marks, may have represented ...

Like many math students, I had dreams of mathematical greatness. I thought I was close once. A difficult algebra problem in college kept me working late into the night. After hours of struggle, I felt ...

Despite its high-minded plot, Prime Target is the kind of show that you can turn your brain off for. The series combines international intrigue, government conspiracies and a handful of ...

A basic feature of number theory, prime numbers are also a fundamental building block of computer science, from hashtables to cryptography. Everyone knows that a prime number is one that cannot be ...

Image made with elements from Canva. Let’s go back to grade school—do you remember learning about prime numbers? They’re numbers that can only be divided by themselves and one. So 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, and ...

For those who number ourselves among the algebraically impaired, higher math is like outer space—a forbidding frontier; a sphere of unknowns, peril and, as has been proved often enough, drama. It ...

One of my favorite anecdotes about prime numbers concerns Alexander Grothendieck, who was among the most brilliant mathematicians of the 20th century. According to one account, he was once asked to ...

Erick Massoto is a Brazilian writer who's always loved film and TV and loves finding connections between them. That's why he supports double features, especially if they are of a modern film paired ...

Find one million consecutive positive numbers, none of which are prime. Ancient math tells us that prime numbers (2, 3, 5, 7, 11, ...,), which have no factors except for 1 and themselves, go on ...