Portal:Mathematics

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Pythagoras

Mathematics is the study of representing and reasoning about abstract objects (such as numbers, points, spaces, sets, structures, and games). Mathematics is used throughout the world as an essential tool in many fields, including natural science, engineering, medicine, and the social sciences. Applied mathematics, the branch of mathematics concerned with application of mathematical knowledge to other fields, inspires and makes use of new mathematical discoveries and sometimes leads to the development of entirely new mathematical disciplines, such as statistics and game theory. Mathematicians also engage in pure mathematics, or mathematics for its own sake, without having any application in mind. There is no clear line separating pure and applied mathematics, and practical applications for what began as pure mathematics are often discovered. (Full article...)

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  Featured articles are displayed here, which represent some of the best content on English Wikipedia.

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  Richard Phillips Feynman (/ˈfaɪnmən/; May 11, 1918 – February 15, 1988) was an American theoretical physicist. He is known for the work he did in the path integral formulation of quantum mechanics, the theory of quantum electrodynamics, the physics of the superfluidity of supercooled liquid helium, and in particle physics, for which he proposed the parton model. For his contributions to the development of quantum electrodynamics, Feynman received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1965 jointly with Julian Schwinger and Shin'ichirō Tomonaga.
  
  Feynman developed a widely used pictorial representation scheme for the mathematical expressions describing the behavior of subatomic particles, which later became known as Feynman diagrams. During his lifetime, Feynman became one of the best-known scientists in the world. In a 1999 poll of 130 leading physicists worldwide by the British journal Physics World, he was ranked the seventh-greatest physicist of all time. (Full article...)
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  The number π (/paɪ/; spelled out as "pi") is a mathematical constant that is the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter, approximately equal to 3.14159. The number π appears in many formulae across mathematics and physics. It is an irrational number, meaning that it cannot be expressed exactly as a ratio of two integers, although fractions such as ${\tfrac {22}{7}}$ are commonly used to approximate it. Consequently, its decimal representation never ends, nor enters a permanently repeating pattern. It is a transcendental number, meaning that it cannot be a solution of an equation involving only finite sums, products, powers, and integers. The transcendence of π implies that it is impossible to solve the ancient challenge of squaring the circle with a compass and straightedge. The decimal digits of π appear to be randomly distributed, but no proof of this conjecture has been found.
  
  For thousands of years, mathematicians have attempted to extend their understanding of π, sometimes by computing its value to a high degree of accuracy. Ancient civilizations, including the Egyptians and Babylonians, required fairly accurate approximations of π for practical computations. Around 250 BC, the Greek mathematician Archimedes created an algorithm to approximate π with arbitrary accuracy. In the 5th century AD, Chinese mathematicians approximated π to seven digits, while Indian mathematicians made a five-digit approximation, both using geometrical techniques. The first computational formula for π, based on infinite series, was discovered a millennium later. The earliest known use of the Greek letter π to represent the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter was by the Welsh mathematician William Jones in 1706. (Full article...)
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  High-precision test of general relativity by the Cassini space probe (artist's impression): radio signals sent between the Earth and the probe (green wave) are delayed by the warping of spacetime (blue lines) due to the Sun's mass.

  
  
  General relativity is a theory of gravitation developed by Albert Einstein between 1907 and 1915. The theory of general relativity says that the observed gravitational effect between masses results from their warping of spacetime.
  
  By the beginning of the 20th century, Newton's law of universal gravitation had been accepted for more than two hundred years as a valid description of the gravitational force between masses. In Newton's model, gravity is the result of an attractive force between massive objects. Although even Newton was troubled by the unknown nature of that force, the basic framework was extremely successful at describing motion. (Full article...)
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  One of Molyneux's celestial globes, which is displayed in Middle Temple Library – from the frontispiece of the Hakluyt Society's 1889 reprint of A Learned Treatise of Globes, both Cœlestiall and Terrestriall, one of the English editions of Robert Hues' Latin work Tractatus de Globis (1594)

  
  Emery Molyneux (/ˈɛməri ˈmɒlɪnoʊ/ EM-ər-ee MOL-in-oh; died June 1598) was an English Elizabethan maker of globes, mathematical instruments and ordnance. His terrestrial and celestial globes, first published in 1592, were the first to be made in England and the first to be made by an Englishman.
  
  Molyneux was known as a mathematician and maker of mathematical instruments such as compasses and hourglasses. He became acquainted with many prominent men of the day, including the writer Richard Hakluyt and the mathematicians Robert Hues and Edward Wright. He also knew the explorers Thomas Cavendish, Francis Drake, Walter Raleigh and John Davis. Davis probably introduced Molyneux to his own patron, the London merchant William Sanderson, who largely financed the construction of the globes. When completed, the globes were presented to Elizabeth I. Larger globes were acquired by royalty, noblemen and academic institutions, while smaller ones were purchased as practical navigation aids for sailors and students. The globes were the first to be made in such a way that they were unaffected by the humidity at sea, and they came into general use on ships. (Full article...)
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  The title page of a 1634 version of Hues' Tractatus de globis in the collection of the Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal

  
  Robert Hues (1553 – 24 May 1632) was an English mathematician and geographer. He attended St. Mary Hall at Oxford, and graduated in 1578. Hues became interested in geography and mathematics, and studied navigation at a school set up by Walter Raleigh. During a trip to Newfoundland, he made observations which caused him to doubt the accepted published values for variations of the compass. Between 1586 and 1588, Hues travelled with Thomas Cavendish on a circumnavigation of the globe, performing astronomical observations and taking the latitudes of places they visited. Beginning in August 1591, Hues and Cavendish again set out on another circumnavigation of the globe. During the voyage, Hues made astronomical observations in the South Atlantic, and continued his observations of the variation of the compass at various latitudes and at the Equator. Cavendish died on the journey in 1592, and Hues returned to England the following year.
  
  In 1594, Hues published his discoveries in the Latin work Tractatus de globis et eorum usu (Treatise on Globes and Their Use) which was written to explain the use of the terrestrial and celestial globes that had been made and published by Emery Molyneux in late 1592 or early 1593, and to encourage English sailors to use practical astronomical navigation. Hues' work subsequently went into at least 12 other printings in Dutch, English, French and Latin. (Full article...)
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  The first 15,000 partial sums of 0 + 1 − 2 + 3 − 4 + ... The graph is situated with positive integers to the right and negative integers to the left.

  
  
  In mathematics, 1 − 2 + 3 − 4 + ··· is an infinite series whose terms are the successive positive integers, given alternating signs. Using sigma summation notation the sum of the first m terms of the series can be expressed as
  $$\sum _{n=1}^{m}n(-1)^{n-1}.$$
  
  The infinite series diverges, meaning that its sequence of partial sums, (1, −1, 2, −2, 3, ...), does not tend towards any finite limit. Nonetheless, in the mid-18th century, Leonhard Euler wrote what he admitted to be a paradoxical equation:
  $$1-2+3-4+\cdots ={\frac {1}{4}}.$$ (Full article...)
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  Title page of the first edition of Wright's Certaine Errors in Navigation (1599)

  
  Edward Wright (baptised 8 October 1561; died November 1615) was an English mathematician and cartographer noted for his book Certaine Errors in Navigation (1599; 2nd ed., 1610), which for the first time explained the mathematical basis of the Mercator projection by building on the works of Pedro Nunes, and set out a reference table giving the linear scale multiplication factor as a function of latitude, calculated for each minute of arc up to a latitude of 75°. This was in fact a table of values of the integral of the secant function, and was the essential step needed to make practical both the making and the navigational use of Mercator charts.
  
  Wright was born at Garveston in Norfolk and educated at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, where he became a fellow from 1587 to 1596. In 1589 the college granted him leave after Elizabeth I requested that he carry out navigational studies with a raiding expedition organised by the Earl of Cumberland to the Azores to capture Spanish galleons. The expedition's route was the subject of the first map to be prepared according to Wright's projection, which was published in Certaine Errors in 1599. The same year, Wright created and published the first world map produced in England and the first to use the Mercator projection since Gerardus Mercator's original 1569 map. (Full article...)
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  Logic studies valid forms of inference like modus ponens.

  
  
  Logic is the study of correct reasoning. It includes both formal and informal logic. Formal logic is the study of deductively valid inferences or logical truths. It examines how conclusions follow from premises based on the structure of arguments alone, independent of their topic and content. Informal logic is associated with informal fallacies, critical thinking, and argumentation theory. Informal logic examines arguments expressed in natural language whereas formal logic uses formal language. When used as a countable noun, the term "a logic" refers to a specific logical formal system that articulates a proof system. Logic plays a central role in many fields, such as philosophy, mathematics, computer science, and linguistics.
  
  Logic studies arguments, which consist of a set of premises that leads to a conclusion. An example is the argument from the premises "it's Sunday" and "if it's Sunday then I don't have to work" leading to the conclusion "I don't have to work". Premises and conclusions express propositions or claims that can be true or false. An important feature of propositions is their internal structure. For example, complex propositions are made up of simpler propositions linked by logical vocabulary like $\land$ (and) or $\to$ (if...then). Simple propositions also have parts, like "Sunday" or "work" in the example. The truth of a proposition usually depends on the meanings of all of its parts. However, this is not the case for logically true propositions. They are true only because of their logical structure independent of the specific meanings of the individual parts. (Full article...)
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  Noether c. 1900–1910

  
  Amalie Emmy Noether (US: /ˈnʌtər/, UK: /ˈnɜːtə/; German: [ˈnøːtɐ]; 23 March 1882 – 14 April 1935) was a German mathematician who made many important contributions to abstract algebra. She proved Noether's first and second theorems, which are fundamental in mathematical physics. She was described by Pavel Alexandrov, Albert Einstein, Jean Dieudonné, Hermann Weyl and Norbert Wiener as the most important woman in the history of mathematics. As one of the leading mathematicians of her time, she developed theories of rings, fields, and algebras. In physics, Noether's theorem explains the connection between symmetry and conservation laws.
  
  Noether was born to a Jewish family in the Franconian town of Erlangen; her father was the mathematician Max Noether. She originally planned to teach French and English after passing the required examinations but instead studied mathematics at the University of Erlangen, where her father lectured. After completing her doctorate in 1907 under the supervision of Paul Gordan, she worked at the Mathematical Institute of Erlangen without pay for seven years. At the time, women were largely excluded from academic positions. In 1915, she was invited by David Hilbert and Felix Klein to join the mathematics department at the University of Göttingen, a world-renowned center of mathematical research. The philosophical faculty objected, however, and she spent four years lecturing under Hilbert's name. Her habilitation was approved in 1919, allowing her to obtain the rank of Privatdozent. (Full article...)
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  The regular triangular tiling of the plane, whose symmetries are described by the affine symmetric group S̃₃

  
  The affine symmetric groups are a family of mathematical structures that describe the symmetries of the number line and the regular triangular tiling of the plane, as well as related higher-dimensional objects. In addition to this geometric description, the affine symmetric groups may be defined in other ways: as collections of permutations (rearrangements) of the integers (..., −2, −1, 0, 1, 2, ...) that are periodic in a certain sense, or in purely algebraic terms as a group with certain generators and relations. They are studied in combinatorics and representation theory.
  
  A finite symmetric group consists of all permutations of a finite set. Each affine symmetric group is an infinite extension of a finite symmetric group. Many important combinatorial properties of the finite symmetric groups can be extended to the corresponding affine symmetric groups. Permutation statistics such as descents and inversions can be defined in the affine case. As in the finite case, the natural combinatorial definitions for these statistics also have a geometric interpretation. (Full article...)
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  Euclid's method for finding the greatest common divisor (GCD) of two starting lengths BA and DC, both defined to be multiples of a common "unit" length. The length DC being shorter, it is used to "measure" BA, but only once because the remainder EA is less than DC. EA now measures (twice) the shorter length DC, with remainder FC shorter than EA. Then FC measures (three times) length EA. Because there is no remainder, the process ends with FC being the GCD. On the right Nicomachus's example with numbers 49 and 21 resulting in their GCD of 7 (derived from Heath 1908:300).

  
  
  In mathematics, the Euclidean algorithm, or Euclid's algorithm, is an efficient method for computing the greatest common divisor (GCD) of two integers (numbers), the largest number that divides them both without a remainder. It is named after the ancient Greek mathematician Euclid, who first described it in his Elements (c. 300 BC).
  It is an example of an algorithm, a step-by-step procedure for performing a calculation according to well-defined rules,
  and is one of the oldest algorithms in common use. It can be used to reduce fractions to their simplest form, and is a part of many other number-theoretic and cryptographic calculations.
  
  The Euclidean algorithm is based on the principle that the greatest common divisor of two numbers does not change if the larger number is replaced by its difference with the smaller number. For example, 21 is the GCD of 252 and 105 (as 252 = 21 × 12 and 105 = 21 × 5), and the same number 21 is also the GCD of 105 and 252 − 105 = 147. Since this replacement reduces the larger of the two numbers, repeating this process gives successively smaller pairs of numbers until the two numbers become equal. When that occurs, that number is the GCD of the original two numbers. By reversing the steps or using the extended Euclidean algorithm, the GCD can be expressed as a linear combination of the two original numbers, that is the sum of the two numbers, each multiplied by an integer (for example, 21 = 5 × 105 + (−2) × 252). The fact that the GCD can always be expressed in this way is known as Bézout's identity. (Full article...)
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  The manipulations of the Rubik's Cube form the Rubik's Cube group.

  
  In mathematics, a group is a set with an operation that associates an element of the set to every pair of elements of the set (as does every binary operation) and satisfies the following constraints: the operation is associative, it has an identity element, and every element of the set has an inverse element.
  
  Many mathematical structures are groups endowed with other properties. For example, the integers with the addition operation form an infinite group, which is generated by a single element called ⁠$1$⁠ (these properties characterize the integers in a unique way). (Full article...)
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  Damage from Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Actuaries need to estimate long-term levels of such damage in order to accurately price property insurance, set appropriate reserves, and design appropriate reinsurance and capital management strategies.

  
  An actuary is a professional with advanced mathematical skills who deals with the measurement and management of risk and uncertainty. These risks can affect both sides of the balance sheet and require asset management, liability management, and valuation skills. Actuaries provide assessments of financial security systems, with a focus on their complexity, their mathematics, and their mechanisms. The name of the corresponding academic discipline is actuarial science.
  
  While the concept of insurance dates to antiquity, the concepts needed to scientifically measure and mitigate risks have their origins in the 17th century studies of probability and annuities. Actuaries of the 21st century require analytical skills, business knowledge, and an understanding of human behavior and information systems to design programs that manage risk, by determining if the implementation of strategies proposed for mitigating potential risks, does not exceed the expected cost of those risks actualized. The steps needed to become an actuary, including education and licensing, are specific to a given country, with various additional requirements applied by regional administrative units; however, almost all processes impart universal principles of risk assessment, statistical analysis, and risk mitigation, involving rigorously structured training and examination schedules, taking many years to complete. (Full article...)
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  Portrait by Jakob Emanuel Handmann, 1753

  
  Leonhard Euler (/ˈɔɪlər/ OY-lər; German: [ˈleːɔnhaʁt ˈʔɔʏlɐ] , Swiss Standard German: [ˈleːɔnhart ˈɔʏlər]; 15 April 1707 – 18 September 1783) was a Swiss mathematician, physicist, astronomer, geographer, logician, and engineer who founded the studies of graph theory and topology and made pioneering and influential discoveries in many other branches of mathematics such as analytic number theory, complex analysis, and infinitesimal calculus. He introduced much of modern mathematical terminology and notation, including the notion of a mathematical function. He is also known for his work in mechanics, fluid dynamics, optics, astronomy, and music theory.
  
  Euler is regarded as one of the greatest, most prolific mathematicians in history and the greatest of the 18th century. Several great mathematicians who produced their work after Euler's death have recognised his importance in the field as shown by quotes attributed to many of them: Pierre-Simon Laplace expressed Euler's influence on mathematics by stating, "Read Euler, read Euler, he is the master of us all." Carl Friedrich Gauss wrote: "The study of Euler's works will remain the best school for the different fields of mathematics, and nothing else can replace it." His 866 publications and his correspondence are being collected in the Opera Omnia Leonhard Euler which, when completed, will consist of 81 quartos. He spent most of his adult life in Saint Petersburg, Russia, and in Berlin, then the capital of Prussia. (Full article...)
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  A stamp of Zhang Heng issued by China Post in 1955

  
  Zhang Heng (Chinese: 張衡; AD 78–139), formerly romanized Chang Heng, was a Chinese polymathic scientist and statesman who lived during the Han dynasty. Educated in the capital cities of Luoyang and Chang'an, he achieved success as an astronomer, mathematician, seismologist, hydraulic engineer, inventor, geographer, cartographer, ethnographer, artist, poet, philosopher, politician, and literary scholar.
  
  Zhang Heng began his career as a minor civil servant in Nanyang. Eventually, he became Chief Astronomer, Prefect of the Majors for Official Carriages, and then Palace Attendant at the imperial court. His uncompromising stance on historical and calendrical issues led to his becoming a controversial figure, preventing him from rising to the status of Grand Historian. His political rivalry with the palace eunuchs during the reign of Emperor Shun (r. 125–144) led to his decision to retire from the central court to serve as an administrator of Hejian Kingdom in present-day Hebei. Zhang returned home to Nanyang for a short time, before being recalled to serve in the capital once more in 138. He died there a year later, in 139. (Full article...)

Selected image –

truncated icosahedron with black pentagonal faces and white hexagonal faces, beside a similar-looking 1970s soccer ball

Truncated icosahedron

Credit: Dyfsunctional

Here a polyhedron called a truncated icosahedron (left) is compared to the classic Adidas Telstar–style football (or soccer ball). The familiar 32-panel ball design, consisting of 12 black pentagonal and 20 white hexagonal panels, was first introduced by the Danish manufacturer Select Sport, based loosely on the geodesic dome designs of Buckminster Fuller; it was popularized by the selection of the Adidas Telstar as the official match ball of the 1970 FIFA World Cup. The polyhedron is also the shape of the Buckminsterfullerene (or "Buckyball") carbon molecule initially predicted theoretically in the late 1960s and first generated in the laboratory in 1985. Like all polyhedra, the vertices (corner points), edges (lines between these points), and faces (flat surfaces bounded by the lines) of this solid obey the Euler characteristic, V − E + F = 2 (here, 60 − 90 + 32 = 2). The icosahedron from which this solid is obtained by truncating (or "cutting off") each vertex (replacing each by a pentagonal face), has 12 vertices, 30 edges, and 20 faces; it is one of the five regular solids, or Platonic solids—named after Plato, whose school of philosophy in ancient Greece held that the classical elements (earth, water, air, fire, and a fifth element called aether) were associated with these regular solids. The fifth element was known in Latin as the "quintessence", a hypothesized uncorruptible material (in contrast to the other four terrestrial elements) filling the heavens and responsible for celestial phenomena. That such idealized mathematical shapes as polyhedra actually occur in nature (e.g., in crystals and other molecular structures) was discovered by naturalists and physicists in the 19th and 20th centuries, largely independently of the ancient philosophies.

Good articles –

  These are Good articles, which meet a core set of high editorial standards.

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  A graph with three components

  
  In graph theory, a component of an undirected graph is a connected subgraph that is not part of any larger connected subgraph. The components of any graph partition its vertices into disjoint sets, and are the induced subgraphs of those sets. A graph that is itself connected has exactly one component, consisting of the whole graph. Components are sometimes called connected components.
  
  The number of components in a given graph is an important graph invariant, and is closely related to invariants of matroids, topological spaces, and matrices. In random graphs, a frequently occurring phenomenon is the incidence of a giant component, one component that is significantly larger than the others; and of a percolation threshold, an edge probability above which a giant component exists and below which it does not. (Full article...)
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  The Earth–Moon problem is an unsolved problem on graph coloring in mathematics. It is an extension of the planar map coloring problem (solved by the four color theorem), and was posed by Gerhard Ringel in 1959. An intuitive form of the problem asks how many colors are needed to color political maps of the Earth and Moon, in a hypothetical future where each Earth country has a Moon colony which must be given the same color. In mathematical terms, it seeks the chromatic number of biplanar graphs. It is known that this number is at least 9 and at most 12.
  
  The Earth–Moon problem has been extended to analogous problems of coloring maps on any number of planets. For this extension the lower bounds and upper bounds on the number of colors are closer, within two of each other. One real-world application of the Earth–Moon problem involves testing printed circuit boards. (Full article...)
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  In graph theory, a cop-win graph is an undirected graph on which the pursuer (cop) can always win a pursuit–evasion game against a robber, with the players taking alternating turns in which they can choose to move along an edge of a graph or stay put, until the cop lands on the robber's vertex. Finite cop-win graphs are also called dismantlable graphs or constructible graphs, because they can be dismantled by repeatedly removing a dominated vertex (one whose closed neighborhood is a subset of another vertex's neighborhood) or constructed by repeatedly adding such a vertex. The cop-win graphs can be recognized in polynomial time by a greedy algorithm that constructs a dismantling order. They include the chordal graphs, and the graphs that contain a universal vertex. (Full article...)
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  Slices of approximately 1/8 of a pizza

  
  
  A unit fraction is a positive fraction with one as its numerator, 1/n. It is the multiplicative inverse (reciprocal) of the denominator of the fraction, which must be a positive natural number. Examples are 1/1, 1/2, 1/3, 1/4, 1/5, etc. When an object is divided into equal parts, each part is a unit fraction of the whole.
  
  Multiplying two unit fractions produces another unit fraction, but other arithmetic operations do not preserve unit fractions. In modular arithmetic, unit fractions can be converted into equivalent whole numbers, allowing modular division to be transformed into multiplication. Every rational number can be represented as a sum of distinct unit fractions; these representations are called Egyptian fractions based on their use in ancient Egyptian mathematics. Many infinite sums of unit fractions are meaningful mathematically. (Full article...)
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  Title page of De quinque corporibus regularibus

  
  De quinque corporibus regularibus (sometimes called Libellus de quinque corporibus regularibus) is a book on the geometry of polyhedra written in the 1480s or early 1490s by Italian painter and mathematician Piero della Francesca. It is a manuscript, in the Latin language; its title means [the little book] on the five regular solids. It is one of three books known to have been written by della Francesca.
  
  Along with the Platonic solids, De quinque corporibus regularibus includes descriptions of five of the thirteen Archimedean solids, and of several other irregular polyhedra coming from architectural applications. It was the first of what would become many books connecting mathematics to art through the construction and perspective drawing of polyhedra, including Luca Pacioli's 1509 Divina proportione (which incorporated without credit an Italian translation of della Francesca's work). (Full article...)
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  The red graph is the dual graph of the blue graph, and vice versa.

  
  In the mathematical discipline of graph theory, the dual graph of a planar graph G is a graph that has a vertex for each face of G. The dual graph has an edge for each pair of faces in G that are separated from each other by an edge, and a self-loop when the same face appears on both sides of an edge. Thus, each edge e of G has a corresponding dual edge, whose endpoints are the dual vertices corresponding to the faces on either side of e. The definition of the dual depends on the choice of embedding of the graph G, so it is a property of plane graphs (graphs that are already embedded in the plane) rather than planar graphs (graphs that may be embedded but for which the embedding is not yet known). For planar graphs generally, there may be multiple dual graphs, depending on the choice of planar embedding of the graph.
  
  Historically, the first form of graph duality to be recognized was the association of the Platonic solids into pairs of dual polyhedra. Graph duality is a topological generalization of the geometric concepts of dual polyhedra and dual tessellations, and is in turn generalized combinatorially by the concept of a dual matroid. Variations of planar graph duality include a version of duality for directed graphs, and duality for graphs embedded onto non-planar two-dimensional surfaces. (Full article...)
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  Viète's formula, as printed in Viète's Variorum de rebus mathematicis responsorum, liber VIII (1593)

  
  
  In mathematics, Viète's formula is the following infinite product of nested radicals representing twice the reciprocal of the mathematical constant π:
  $${\frac {2}{\pi }}={\frac {\sqrt {2}}{2}}\cdot {\frac {\sqrt {2+{\sqrt {2}}}}{2}}\cdot {\frac {\sqrt {2+{\sqrt {2+{\sqrt {2}}}}}}{2}}\cdots$$
  It can also be represented as
  $${\frac {2}{\pi }}=\prod _{n=1}^{\infty }\cos {\frac {\pi }{2^{n+1}}}.$$
  
  The formula is named after François Viète, who published it in 1593. As the first formula of European mathematics to represent an infinite process, it can be given a rigorous meaning as a limit expression and marks the beginning of mathematical analysis. It has linear convergence and can be used for calculations of π, but other methods before and since have led to greater accuracy. It has also been used in calculations of the behavior of systems of springs and masses and as a motivating example for the concept of statistical independence. (Full article...)
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  Two right triangles with the two legs of the top one equal to the leg and hypotenuse of the bottom one. For these lengths, $a^{2}$, $b^{2}$, and $c^{2}$ form an arithmetic progression separated by a gap of $d^{2}$. It is not possible for all four lengths $a$, $b$, $c$, and $d$ to be integers.

  
  Fermat's right triangle theorem is a non-existence proof in number theory, published in 1670 among the works of Pierre de Fermat, soon after his death. It is the only complete proof given by Fermat. It has many equivalent formulations, one of which was stated (but not proved) in 1225 by Fibonacci. In its geometric forms, it states:

  • A right triangle in the Euclidean plane for which all three side lengths are rational numbers cannot have an area that is the square of a rational number. The area of a rational-sided right triangle is called a congruent number, so no congruent number can be square.
  • A right triangle and a square with equal areas cannot have all sides commensurate with each other.
  • There do not exist two integer-sided right triangles in which the two legs of one triangle are the leg and hypotenuse of the other triangle.

  
  More abstractly, as a result about Diophantine equations (integer or rational-number solutions to polynomial equations), it is equivalent to the statements that:

  • If three square numbers form an arithmetic progression, then the gap between consecutive numbers in the progression (called a congruum) cannot itself be square.
  • The only rational points on the elliptic curve $y^{2}=x(x-1)(x+1)$ are the three trivial points with $x\in \{-1,0,1\}$ and $y=0$.
  • The quartic equation $x^{4}-y^{4}=z^{2}$ has no nonzero integer solution.

  
  An immediate consequence of the last of these formulations is that Fermat's Last Theorem is true in the special case that its exponent is 4. (Full article...)
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  An optimal drawing of K_4,7, with 18 crossings (red dots)

  
  In the mathematics of graph drawing, Turán's brick factory problem asks for the minimum number of crossings in a drawing of a complete bipartite graph. The problem is named after Pál Turán, who formulated it while being forced to work in a brick factory during World War II.
  
  A drawing method found by Kazimierz Zarankiewicz has been conjectured to give the correct answer for every complete bipartite graph, and the statement that this is true has come to be known as the Zarankiewicz crossing number conjecture. The conjecture remains open, with only some special cases solved. (Full article...)
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  In geometry, a square pyramid is a pyramid with a square base, having a total of five faces. If the apex of the pyramid is directly above the center of the square, it is a right square pyramid with four isosceles triangles; otherwise, it is an oblique square pyramid. When all of the pyramid's edges are equal in length, its triangles are all equilateral. It is called an equilateral square pyramid, an example of a Johnson solid.
  
  Square pyramids have appeared throughout the history of architecture, with examples being Egyptian pyramids and many other similar buildings. They also occur in chemistry in square pyramidal molecular structures. Square pyramids are often used in the construction of other polyhedra. Many mathematicians in ancient times discovered the formula for the volume of a square pyramid with different approaches. (Full article...)
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  Geometric representation of the square pyramidal number 1 + 4 + 9 + 16 = 30.

  
  In mathematics, a pyramid number, or square pyramidal number, is a natural number that counts the stacked spheres in a pyramid with a square base. The study of these numbers goes back to Archimedes and Fibonacci. They are part of a broader topic of figurate numbers representing the numbers of points forming regular patterns within different shapes.
  
  As well as counting spheres in a pyramid, these numbers can be described algebraically as a sum of the first $n$ positive square numbers, or as the values of a cubic polynomial. They can be used to solve several other counting problems, including counting squares in a square grid and counting acute triangles formed from the vertices of an odd regular polygon. They equal the sums of consecutive tetrahedral numbers, and are one-fourth of a larger tetrahedral number. The sum of two consecutive square pyramidal numbers is an octahedral number. (Full article...)
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  A three-page book embedding of the complete graph K₅. Because it is not a planar graph, it is not possible to embed this graph without crossings on fewer pages, so its book thickness is three.

  
  In graph theory, a book embedding is a generalization of planar embedding of a graph to embeddings in a book, a collection of half-planes all having the same line as their boundary. Usually, the vertices of the graph are required to lie on this boundary line, called the spine, and the edges are required to stay within a single half-plane. The book thickness of a graph is the smallest possible number of half-planes for any book embedding of the graph. Book thickness is also called pagenumber, stacknumber or fixed outerthickness. Book embeddings have also been used to define several other graph invariants including the pagewidth and book crossing number.
  
  Every graph with n vertices has book thickness at most $\lceil n/2\rceil$, and this formula gives the exact book thickness for complete graphs. The graphs with book thickness one are the outerplanar graphs. The graphs with book thickness at most two are the subhamiltonian graphs, which are always planar; more generally, every planar graph has book thickness at most four. It is NP-hard to determine the exact book thickness of a given graph, with or without knowing a fixed vertex ordering along the spine of the book. Testing the existence of a three-page book embedding of a graph, given a fixed ordering of the vertices along the spine of the embedding, has unknown computational complexity: it is neither known to be solvable in polynomial time nor known to be NP-hard. (Full article...)

Did you know (auto-generated) –

• ... that in the aftermath of the American Civil War, the only Black-led organization providing teachers to formerly enslaved people was the African Civilization Society?
• ... that Green Day's "Wake Me Up When September Ends" became closely associated with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina?
• ... that the discovery of Descartes' theorem in geometry came from a too-difficult mathematics problem posed to a princess?
• ... that in 1940 Xu Ruiyun became the first Chinese woman to receive a PhD in mathematics?
• ... that after Florida schools banned 54 mathematics books, Chaz Stevens petitioned that they also ban the Bible?
• ... that despite a mathematical model deeming the ice cream bar flavour Goody Goody Gum Drops impossible, it was still created?
• ... that although the problem of squaring the circle with compass and straightedge goes back to Greek mathematics, it was not proven impossible until 1882?
• ... that Catechumen, a Christian first-person shooter, was funded only in the aftermath of the Columbine High School massacre?

More did you know –

Did you know...

• ... that economists blame market failures on non-convexity?
• ... that, according to the pizza theorem, a circular pizza that is sliced off-center into eight equal-angled wedges can still be divided equally between two people?
• ... that the clique problem of programming a computer to find complete subgraphs in an undirected graph was first studied as a way to find groups of people who all know each other in social networks?
• ... that the Herschel graph is the smallest possible polyhedral graph that does not have a Hamiltonian cycle?
• ... that the Life without Death cellular automaton, a mathematical model of pattern formation, is a variant of Conway's Game of Life in which cells, once brought to life, never die?
• ... that one can list every positive rational number without repetition by breadth-first traversal of the Calkin–Wilf tree?
• ... that the Hadwiger conjecture implies that the external surface of any three-dimensional convex body can be illuminated by only eight light sources, but the best proven bound is that 16 lights are sufficient?

Selected article –

Dodecahedron Image credit:

A Platonic solid is a convex regular polyhedron. These are the three-dimensional analogs of the convex regular polygons. There are precisely five such figures (shown on the left). The name of each figure is derived from the number of its faces: respectively 4, 6, 8, 12 and 20. They are unique in that the sides, edges and angles are all congruent.
Due to their aesthetic beauty and symmetry, the Platonic solids have been a favorite subject of geometers for thousands of years. They are named after the ancient Greek philosopher Plato who claimed the classical elements were constructed from the regular solids.
The Platonic solids have been known since antiquity. The five solids were certainly known to the ancient Greeks and there is evidence that these figures were known long before then. The neolithic people of Scotland constructed stone models of all five solids at least 1000 years before Plato. (Full article...)

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