Mathematics is the science of numbers and shapes. Mathematics may also be considered a formal language to describe physics.
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Did only a handful of people in Europe know how to do division before the 13th century?
Nicholas Nassem Taleb's latest book (Antifragile) continues to provide fascinating unreferenced claims.
In the middle of an argument that much of the important knowledge in the world is practical, ...
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237 views
Did Abraham de Moivre Predict His Own Death?
According to the website I was perusing, found here, it stated that a mathematician named Abraham de Moivre, predicted the date of his own death (using some nonsensical method of when he had slept for ...
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1answer
404 views
Do higher mathematical abilities inversely correlate with good communication skills?
There is a persistent stereotype that geeks (let's formally define that as people a couple of standard deviations better than average in math, computers or other related abilities) as a whole have ...
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2answers
360 views
Is poker more a game of skill than chance?
I just read a NY Times article which claims that a US Judge ruled that poker is a game of skill and not one of chance.
In a ruling that goes to the heart of what it means to play poker, Judge Jack ...
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404 views
Did John Padgett become a math genius after getting hit on the head?
There have been some news reports about a college dropout, John Padgett, becoming a math genius after getting hit on the head. Could this be true or how much of this could be true?
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1k views
Can Bruce Bueno de Mesquita predict the future with mathematics?
Bruce Bueno de Mesquita is called the "New Nostradamus". According to his claims he is able to predict (and has predicted) big economic events such as the 2009 economic crisis. Supposedly he has a ...
10
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1answer
423 views
Are STEM (science tech engineering math) suffering a shortage of people in the US?
I have been always hearing of not enough people in the science and technology field in the US. The government is always coming up with initiatives to increase the number of people. From my experience ...
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112 views
Does counting with fingers diminish the ability to work with numbers in the future for children?
There is a belief that says children who count with the aid of their fingers will be prone to having problems in math in the later years to come.
Is this belief true?
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239 views
Do Imperial units make United States children worse at maths?
It is claimed on Cracked.com:
There's also some evidence that our jalopy measurement system [imperial, ndr] is part of what's making U.S. students bad at math. In Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers, he ...
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316 views
Did ninjas use Pythagoras' theorem to determine the depth of moats?
Ninjas are alleged to have determined the depth of moats by taking a reed that's attached to the bottom of the moat, and measuring the height of the reed above water, and how far forward they had to ...
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5answers
7k views
Is Mecca at a special place on the earth's surface, dictated by the Golden Mean?
Mecca considered by Muslims to be the holiest city of Islam.
This video about the Mecca makes the following claims:
Mecca is at a special point on the Earth's surface in the sense that its ...
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199 views
Is kabbah the center of the earth [duplicate]
Possible Duplicate:
Question about the Kabbah and the center of the earth
In the following video it is claimed that Kabbah is the center of the earth. What is the scientific proof of this ...
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1answer
198 views
Did Grothendieck reinvent the Lebesgue integral?
I have heard multiple times the story that while being a first year undergraduate student, mathematician Alexander Grothendieck rediscovered the Lebesgue integration, which was not so known at this ...
20
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1answer
501 views
If children use calculators in primary school, is their learning impacted?
Others are against using calculator in lower level math teaching, saying that it makes children not to learn their basic facts, prevents students from discovering and understanding underlying ...
16
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2answers
730 views
Can you measure the area of a shape with a ruler and a bent coathanger?
This youtube video video from How Round is Your Circle? claims you can estimate area with a tool created from a bent coat-hanger.
I am a little skeptical about the claim which is why I am posting ...
19
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1answer
431 views
Was the mathematical genius of Gauss discovered at school?
It is often said that the genius of Carl Friedrich Gauss was first discovered when his teacher told the students to calculate the sum of all integers from 1 to 100 to keep them occupied and young ...
