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Videos

  • Eric Lander: The Genesis of Genius

    How did Eric Lander go from being an extremely talented and accomplished mathematician to making one of the most important contributions to the field of genetics? We take a look...

  • Mysteries of the Mathematical Universe

    Full 90 Minute Program:Mathematical mysteries have challenged humanity’s most powerful thinkers and inspired passionate, lifelong obsessions in search of answers. From the...

  • Looking Through the Eyes of Mathematics

    Is it possible to deduce the shape of the universe without stepping outside of it? Henri Poincaré thought so. Similar to how the Greeks were able to discern the spherical nature...

  • Process and the Mathematical Revolution

    How do mathematicians work? We’re not asking whether they run on sandwiches or rocket fuel, but rather, “How is a mathematician’s work done?” Is it like the movies, where a...

  • Can Math Be Beautiful?

    What is it about Euclid’s infinite primes that rocks Simon Singh’s world? What makes math different from the rest of the sciences? Listen as he and mathematician Marcus du Sautoy...

  • The Origin of Numbers

    Where did math come from? Which numbers arose first? Did math develop the same way across cultures? While the details are fuzzy, history shows that if people have ever needed to...

  • Welcome to the Mathematical Universe

    Look around you. Underlying every aspect of the world is a language that we all know, though our use and expertise may vary. This language, mathematics, can be used to describe...

  • Spotlight: From Math to Ants

    Strip away the trimmings of a traditional science presentation, add cocktails, and you have WSF Spotlight. As a young girl, Corina Tarnita found herself with a talent for...

  • Creating Universes with Digital Bits

    In 1970, a mathematician named John Horton Conway devised a self-sustaining simulation based on several simple rules. What he didn’t know is that his “Game of Life” would create a...

  • What Is Public Key Encryption?

    A 1976, two Stanford researchers devised an encryption method that revolutionized cryptography by making it easier to send encrypted information without having to agree on a key...

  • The Improbable Truth about Numbers

    Four out of five dentists recommend a name brand toothpaste. One in ten people will develop a deadly cancer. 97% of statistics are made up on the spot. As humans, we have a...

  • Telephone Math: Lost in Translation

    We’ve all been there before: you receive your phone bill in the mail and find some dubious charge. But as one customer found, it can be difficult to convince your carrier of the...

  • Hey, That’s My Birthday Too

    Imagine sitting in a classroom. Let’s say there are 30 people in the class. What are the odds that two people in the room have the same exact birthday? Mathematician Amir Aczel...

  • The Limits of Understanding

    This statement is false. Think about it, and it makes your head hurt. If it’s true, it’s false. If it’s false, it’s true. In 1931, Austrian logician Kurt Gödel shocked...

  • Faith in the Mathematical Order

    The word “theory” has very different meanings depending on whether you are speaking in an everyday sense or in scientific language. Cosmologist Paul Davies explains this...

  • Why Extra Dimensions Make Sense

    In recent years, a growing body of work—based on the principles of quantum mechanics, cosmology, and string theory—has been steadily converging around a proposal that our...

  • Moth: The Randomness of Concentration Camps

    WSF teams up with what The Wall Street Journal calls “New York’s hottest and hippest literary ticket,” The Moth, for an innovative series of unpredictable storytelling....

  • The Mathemagician

    In this highly entertaining performance combining math with magic, Arthur Benjamin—aka, the the “Mathemagician”—displays amazing feats of mental mathematical gymnastics and...

  • Mental Math

    The Mathemagician explains how multiplying numbers from left-to-right in your head (instead of right-to-left, as you do it on paper), makes mental math easier, and multiplying any...

  • Incompleteness and Complexity

    Most people assume that mathematics lead to absolute certainty, but Kurt Gödel’s incompleteness theorems deny that result. Gregory Chaitin explains his own attempts to make sense...

  • Gödel’s Lasting Legacy

    Austrian logician Kurt Gödel’s incompleteness theorems showed us the limitations of mathematics within mathematics. While math is still useful for proving scientific theorems,...

  • Sudoku on Steroids

    The Mathemagician demonstrates how to create a magic square—a special grid of numbers in which all rows, columns, and diagonals sum to the same constant—using a birthday from...

  • The Music of the Spoken Word

    Sound is the emotional glue that holds individuals together. Neuroscientist Jamshed Bharucha explains the importance of verbal communication by discussing the unconscious choices...

  • Platonism vs. Formalism

    Platonists believe that there is a universal truth underlying all of mathematics. Formalists believe all of mathematics can be defined by a set of predefined rules. Ever wonder...

  • Quick: Multiply by 11

    The Mathemagician reveals the surprisingly easy trick behind instantly multiplying any two-digit number by 11. It’s really as simple as 2 + 2.

  • Mathematics: Invented or Discovered?

    Mario Livio discusses the complementary processes of mathematical invention and discovery. While we invent some mathematical concepts—such as prime and imaginary numbers—by...

  • Hearing Yourself Hear

    Listen in as Artist Jacob Kirkegaard tells of his journey to hear himself hear. With the aid of researchers in Copenhagen, Kirkegaard generates an artificial tone in his own ear...

  • Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorems

    What is the nature of mathematics? Mathematics is an a priori discipline, meaning its proofs arise from first principles. The early 19th-century logician Kurt Gödel wrestled with...

  • The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics

    Basic researchers working in pure mathematics often develop fundamental laws, even entire branches of math, without any specific application in mind. Yet, as Mario Livio points...

  • The Discovery of Black Holes

    Today, mathematics is predicting the reality that there are extra dimensions beyond the three that humans can see, the existence of additional universes outside of the one that...

Blog Posts

  • Of Math and Ants

    As a young girl, Corina Tarnita always had talent for mathematics, something she had thought was the norm. As she grew up, however, she quickly realized the difficulties of being a woman in a male-dominiated field.

  • Instant Reaction: Cryptography in a Connected World

    Cryptography—the art and science of hiding information—was once the work of scholars with a bit too much time on their hands but is now inescapable in our digital world. The truly brilliant panelists explained not only how encryption works on the web (Think: really hard...

  • Instant Reaction: Mysteries of the Mathematical Universe

    Following a short film about the omnipresence of math in our everyday lives, whether we notice it or not, four men who eat and breathe mathematics discussed their passion: how they got into math, whether the eccentric mathematical genius is a true trope, and why current...

  • Why I Became a Mathematician

    Beauty is one of the last things most calculus students associate with the subject. That’s hardly surprising. It is generally presented as a utility—a collection of techniques for solving problems to do with continuous change (in the case of differential calculus) or the...

  • The Legacy of a Paradox

    This statement is false. Think about it, and it makes your head hurt. If it’s true, it’s false. If it’s false, it’s true. In 1931, Austrian logician Kurt Gödel shocked the worlds of mathematics and philosophy by establishing that such statements are far more than a quirky turn...

  • Authors Anonymous

    Shhhh...I have a secret. When we send out information about the World Science Festival, the producers commonly use the phrase, "a Festival meant to engage and inspire the public about science." For me, there's no better way to inspire than to offer the public a  chance to...

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