Grade school math students are likely familiar with teachers admonishing them not to just guess the answer to a problem. But a new proof establishes that, in fact, the right kind of guessing is ...

In many ancient cultures people believed that everything had a spirit. Each human, animal, plant, and even each rock and bolt of lightning were understood as we understand ourselves. If we eat because ...

Personalized algorithms may quietly sabotage how people learn, nudging them into narrow tunnels of information even when they ...

The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. One July afternoon in 2024, Ryan Williams set out to prove himself wrong. Two months had passed since he’d hit upon a startling ...