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Population Growth and Climate Change Explained Using Lego
There’s seemingly no limit to the power of Lego, and in this video Hans Rosling uses it with great panache to explain the problems of population growth and climate change. They’re two of the biggest,...
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Batman’s Awesome Sonar Phone Made a Reality by Science
Remember in the Dark Knight where Bruce Wayne fires up his seriously badass privacy invading phone sonar machine to map out the whole of Gotham to track the Joker? Researchers studying echolocation...
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How Much Taxpayer’s Money is GCHQ Spending Watching Your Cat-Porn Videos?
We now know that GCHQ has a perverse interest in our lives. But what we don’t know — and what is arguably more important, as dedicated taxpayers — is whether or not the government’s getting value for...
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Four Infinity Puzzles to Melt Your Monday Evening Mind
It’s Monday evening and one day in the work week ahead seems infinite. It’s not though, and you should be glad because infinity isn’t just long, it’s also confusing. Take for instance this quartet of...
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Teacher Takes Student’s Phone, Sets Passcode as Maths Problem Answer
This is what you want from a maths teacher. The word problem you see here is what happened after a Redditor’s “friend” was caught using his phone during maths lesson. The teacher confiscated the phone,...
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This Calculator Unboxing Parody Is Hilarious
Unboxing videos are perhaps the biggest waste of YouTube storage to grace the planet: watch a pimple-faced youth take a phone out of a cardboard container and play with some basic functions! Woo. But...
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The Weird Maths That Can Make Wheels That Aren’t Circular
If you need something to roll smoothly along the ground, you better strap some of those circular things called wheels to it, right? Well, not quite—because there are actually other shapes that roll...
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All Fry-Up Menus Should Work Like This
Eggs and bacon? Eggs and sausage? Eggs and bacon and sausage? Sometimes the choices at breakfast can be paralysing—but a Venn diagram can make that all better. Spotted by Cory Doctorow at London’s...
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The Maths Hidden in Futurama
You might just watch Futurama and giggle to yourself—as you should!—but if you study it a little more closely, you’ll find that it’s stuffed full of numbers and maths. Ever noticed that the number 1729...
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Here’s How to Win Connect Four Every Time
Connect Four might be a game that triggers childhood flashbacks, but it’s not simple stuff. In fact, Numberphile reports that there are more than 4 trillion unique ways to fill a standard board. But...
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Why Computers Love to Think in Triangles
Humans can understand the world in all its complex 3D glory, from the subtle curve of rolling hills to the jarring harsh lines of Brutalist architecture. But anyone who’s ever played a video game will...
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Why Times and Timezones Still Confuse the Hell Out Developers
There have been no end of time and calendar mess ups in software over the years, and they still seem to keep happening. So why is it that times and timezones still confuse the hell out of developers?...
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Get More Birthdays By Celebrating Mathematically Significant Dates
Birthdays are great, aren’t they? Really, we should have more of them—so why not try and do that by opting to celebrate mathematically significant dates rather than being a slave to the annual event?...
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When Did There Become Too Many Books to Read in One Lifetime?
We’ve all done it: stood in a library, looking around, we’ve been confronted by the fact that there are way, way too many books in existence for us to ever read. But when in history did that happen?...
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How Many Humans Would a T-Rex Need to Eat Every Day to Survive?
If Jurassic Park taught us anything, it’s that humans are easy prey for T-Rex. But just how many human beings would such a dino need to chow down on every day just to survive? Some math by Randall...
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Will Your Novel Be a Best Seller? Ask This Super-Accurate Algorithm
It’s tough for humans to predict how well a book will sell until after it’s published—it’s something of a gamble. But now, a new algorithm can tell if a book will be a commercial success or not long...
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How Old Will You Be When You Publish Your First Literary Masterpiece?
Society places a bizarre amount of weight on when a writer or artist creates their first real successful work—blame our obsession with youth. Still, it’s interesting to see if there’s a correlation...
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Why Do Some People Hate Mathematics So Much?
Some people gobble up algebra and calculus like their life depended on it; others would rather poke hot pins into their eyes than solve a simultaneous equation. But why is that? In this video, Edward...
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How a Mathematician Hacked a Dating Site to Find His Girl
Mathematicians aren’t renowned for their social skills. But in a quest to find love, Chris McKinlay from UCLA realised he could use his analytical skills to his advantage—by hacking dating site...
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New York City is Fighting Fires With Data Mining
Helmets? Check. Oxygen tanks? Check. Hoses? Ditto. Algorithms? Yep: the New York City Fire Department is using data mining to predict which of the city’s buildings are at highest risk of catching fire....
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