Ask a Mathematician
Have a math question you’ve always wondered about? Ask away! Ask a Mathematician is your chance to get answers from Nick, SUMM’s Mathematician in Residence. Explore responses to questions from other curious humans or submit your own question to be featured in a future article.
No question is too big, too small, too weird, or too practical. Why do prime numbers matter? How does infinity work? Is there really math behind music, sports, or baking? We’re here for all of it.
In this week’s Ask a Mathematician, we look a the ways letters were slowly introduced into math over the ages.
In this week’s Ask a Mathematician, we look at Steven Stadnicki’s polyhex puzzle-a-day calendar.
In this week’s Ask a Mathematician, we look at a proof of the Pythagorean theorem, some generalizations, and its relationship with distances in 2D, 3D, and beyond.
Are there mathematicians from Texas? Absolutely! In this week’s Ask a Mathematician, we look at the distinguished careers of Thomas Hales and Mary Wheeler.
AI can already generate mathematical proofs—but can it create genuinely new mathematics? In this month's Ask a Mathematician, Nick Rauh explores the rapidly evolving relationship between artificial intelligence and mathematical discovery. From the limitations of today's AI models to recent breakthroughs on longstanding problems, he examines what mathematicians mean by a "novel proof" and why that question is more complicated than it first appears.
In this week’s Ask a Mathematician, we look at the order of operations and how it came about.