News

A new study co-written by a University of Illinois expert in math education suggests that incorporating technology in high school-level geometry classes not only makes the teaching of concepts such as congruency easier, it also empowers students to discover other geometric relationships they wouldn’t ordinarily uncover when more traditional methods of instruction were used.

Gloriana González, a professor of curriculum and instruction in the College of Education at Illinois, says when students used dynamic geometry software they were more successful in discovering new mathematical ideas than when they used static, paper-based diagrams.

Read more: Adding Technology to Geometry Class Improves Opportunities to Learn

Theories

by Margaret Allen

Scientists have made many discoveries about the origins of our 13.7 billion-year-old universe. But many scientific mysteries remain. What exactly happened during the Big Bang, when rapidly evolving physical processes set the stage for gases to form stars, planets and galaxies? Now astrophysicists using supercomputers to simulate the Big Bang have a new mathematical tool to unravel those mysteries, says Daniel R. Reynolds, assistant professor of mathematics at SMU.

Read more: New Mathematical Model Aids Simulations of Early Universe

Theories

by Larry Hardesty

Constantinos Daskalakis applies the theory of computational complexity to game theory, with consequences in a range of disciplines.

Computer scientists have spent decades developing techniques for answering a single question: How long does a given calculation take to perform? Constantinos Daskalakis, an assistant professor in MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, has exported those techniques to game theory, a branch of mathematics with applications in economics, traffic management — on both the Internet and the interstate — and biology, among other things. By showing that some common game-theoretical problems are so hard that they’d take the lifetime of the universe to solve, Daskalakis is suggesting that they can’t accurately represent what happens in the real world.

Read more: What Computer Science Can Teach Economics

Applications

by Peter Dizikes

MIT economists find a new reason to think that environment, not innate ability, determines how well girls do in math class

When Glenn Ellison’s daughters started middle school in a Boston suburb in 2007, Ellison decided to become a volunteer coach of the school’s math team. While his squad was earning a place in the state finals, Ellison noticed something distinctive about his students.

Read more: The Math Gap

Applications

A team of mathematicians from the Engineering and Architecture Schools of the University of Seville has created a method to design underground lines whereby a city's historical buildings are unaffected. The results of the study, which has just been published in the Journal of the Operational Research Society, offer possible solutions for the future underground line 2 in Seville.

Read more: Underground Power Lines That Bypass Monuments In Cities

Applications

New software is under development that doctors hope will help them identify brain tumours in children that will grow aggressively.

Some brain tumours in children remain benign and doctors choose not to operate. But a small percentage of those will suddenly start to grow aggressively.

Doctors have not identified what triggers that aggressive tumour growth, despite the vast array of data they hold on their child patients – demographic, environmental, genetic and clinical data, as well as images such as MRI and CAT scans of the developing tumours.

Read more: Software for Solving Life-Threatening Medical Problems