Most of us have little trouble working out how many milliliters are in 2.4 liters of water (it's 2,400). But the same can't be said when we're asked how many minutes are in 2.4 hours (it's 144).

Most of us have little trouble working out how many millilitres are in 2.4 litres of water (it’s 2,400). But the same can’t be said when we’re asked how many minutes are in 2.4 hours (it’s 144).

From Quanta Magazine (find original story here). In 1847, Gabriel Lamé proved Fermat’s Last Theorem. Or so he thought. Lamé was a French mathematician who had made many important discoveries. In March ...

The twin primes conjecture is one of the most important and difficult questions in mathematics. Two mathematicians have solved a parallel version of the problem for small number systems. On September ...

The p-adics form an infinite collection of number systems based on prime numbers. They’re at the heart of modern number theory. The rational numbers are the most familiar numbers: 1, -5, ½, and every ...

Binary and hexadecimal numbers systems underpin the way modern computer systems work. Low-level interactions with hexadecimal (hex) and binary are uncommon in the world of Java programming, but ...

The Babylonians used separate combinations of two symbols to represent every single number from 1 to 59. That sounds pretty confusing, doesn’t it? Our decimal system seems simple by comparison, with ...

Jean-Charles Pelland's work has been made possible by financial support from the ‘QUANTA: Evolution of Cognitive Tools for Quantification’ project, which has received funding from the European ...