A mathematical model of elastic rods can be used to describe coiled vine tendrils and kinky phone cords. Despite strong support from statisticians, the Census Bureau's plan to increase the use of sampling in the next census has met resistance in Congress. A participant in the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search discovered the largest known prime number, an 895,932-digit behemoth. By carefully choosing how a message is encoded and decoded, it's possible to approach the theoretical maximum for transmitting information via photons or other quantum particles. A growing number of psychologists charge that their field needs to wean itself from the mindless application of certain statistical practices, especially a technique known as null hypothesis testing, and pursue different methods of exploring mind and behavior.
Computer simulations furnish a means of gleaning insights into human social and economic behavior.
A National Science Foundation report finds no one at the helm of U.S. science and math education, with the result that students are exposed to smatterings of topics that vary regionally and encourage little in-depth learning. A novel pattern made up of overlapping, 10-sided tiles may serve as a model of how atoms arrange themselves into a quasicrystalline structure. A novel algorithm that takes advantage of quantum logic provides, in principle, a faster way to identify a particular item in an unsorted list.