Phys.org Mathmatics

• Basketball analytics investment is key to NBA wins and other successes, says study

  If you filled out a March Madness bracket this month, you probably faced the same question with each college match-up: What gives one team an edge over another? Is it a team's record through the regular season? Or the chemistry among its players? Maybe it's the experience of its coaching staff or the buzz around a top scorer.

• Megastudy finds a simple way to boost math progress

  American students have been falling behind in math for decades—with test scores that consistently rank in the bottom 25% globally compared to students in other developed countries—and the COVID-19 pandemic made the situation worse.

• The secret behind pedestrian crossings—and why some spiral into chaos

  Pedestrian crossings generally showcase the best in pedestrian behavior, with people naturally forming orderly lanes as they cross the road, smoothly passing those coming from the opposite direction without any bumps or scrapes. Sometimes, however, the flow gets chaotic, with individuals weaving through the crowd on their own haphazard paths to the other side.

• Mathematicians crack 40-year-old problem on quasiregularly elliptic manifolds

  A mathematical problem solved by Susanna Heikkilä relates to the classification of quasiregularly elliptic 4-manifolds, asking what four-dimensional shapes can be obtained by deforming four-dimensional Euclidean geometry. The article by Heikkilä and Pekka Pankka has been published in the Annals of Mathematics journal.

• Mathematicians move the needle on the Kakeya conjecture, a decades-old geometric problem

  Mathematicians from New York University and the University of British Columbia have resolved a decades-old geometric problem, the Kakeya conjecture in 3D, which studies the shape left behind by a needle moving in multiple directions.

• Study finds soccer teams move as though they are a single person, offering new insights into collective behavior

  What do albatrosses searching for food, stock market fluctuations, and the dispersal patterns of seeds in the wind have in common?

• Boys in England significantly outperforming girls in math and science

  Recent data shows boys in years 5 and 9 in England have scored significantly higher than girls in math and science compared with 2019, report UCL researchers who analyzed the latest Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS).

• How will artificial intelligence affect wealth equality?

  How will artificial intelligence affect the distribution of income and wealth this century? After falling through much of the 20th century, income inequality, measured as the fraction of income going to the richest 1% of residents, has been rising since the 1980s. The fraction has doubled in both China and the United States during that time, increased by 50% in Europe and one-third worldwide.

• Taking a leap of faith into imaginary numbers opens new doors in the real world through complex analysis

  To a nonmathematician, having the letter "i" represent a number that does not quite exist and is "imaginary" can be hard to wrap your head around. If you open your mind to this way of thinking, however, a whole new world becomes possible.

• How good are South African kids at math? Trends from a global study

  School mathematics in South Africa is often seen as a sign of the health of the education system more generally. Under the racial laws of apartheid, until 1994, African people were severely restricted from learning math. Tracking the changes in math performance is a measure of how far the country has traveled in overcoming past injustices. Math is also an essential foundation for meeting the challenges of the future, like artificial intelligence, climate change, energy and sustainable development.

• Dudeney's 120-year-old dissection puzzle solution proves optimal

  In 1907, the English author and mathematician Henry Ernest Dudeney posed a puzzle: Can any equilateral triangle be cut into as few pieces as possible that will fit together to form a perfect square? Four weeks later, he presented an elegant solution, showing that only four pieces were needed.

• AI-based math: Individualized support for students uses eye tracking

  Researchers at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) and the University of Cologne have developed an AI-based learning system that recognizes strengths and weaknesses in mathematics by tracking eye movements with a webcam to generate problem-solving hints. This enables teachers to provide significantly more children with individualized support.

• Hiring strategies: Researchers propose a model to maximize success in professional recruitment

  When it comes to hiring new staff, large companies often have to choose from hundreds of candidates, a process that requires time and resources. Can mathematics help streamline these procedures? At least in the broadest sense, probably yes.

• Nessie loves a sunny summer's day—how anecdotes become data

  New research from the University of St Andrews has used a database of Loch Ness Monster reports to translate anecdotes into data, shedding light on statistical biases and the importance of defining the right information for analysis.

• The math behind social distancing: The rules that influence epidemic behavior

  Studying epidemics can help us plan for the future and identify better ways of dealing with them. Now, in a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a multi-institutional research team led by the Institute of Industrial Science, The University of Tokyo, has worked out how to understand social-distancing behavior.

• Mathematical model improves prediction of human mobility between cities

  How many people will travel during a given week between two specific cities? Answering this question is important for many reasons, for example, to design efficient public transport infrastructures, or, as was the case during the COVID-19 pandemic, to understand how mobility patterns could be used to predict the spread and evolution of the virus.

• What's the shape of the universe? Mathematicians use topology to study its shape and everything in it

  When you look at your surrounding environment, it might seem like you're living on a flat plane. After all, this is why you can navigate a new city using a map: a flat piece of paper that represents all the places around you. This is likely why some people in the past believed the Earth to be flat. But most people now know that is far from the truth.

• From slime molds to corporations, traveling networks chart a new path

  You can learn a lot from a little slime mold. For Nate Cira, assistant professor of biomedical engineering in Cornell Engineering, the tiny eukaryotic organism provided inspiration for modeling "traveling networks"—connected systems that move by rearranging their structure.

• Mathematicians introduce crossing matrices to decode doubly periodic weaves

  Doubly periodic weaves—entangled structures with repeating patterns in two independent directions—pose a mathematical challenge. Originally conceived to model real-world structures, such as woven textiles and molecular weaving of polymers, mathematicians have generalized the theory to include weaves with any number of distinct directions, extending beyond practical weaving to a broader topological framework.

• Model suggests voter turnout alone can predict election victory margins

  Elections are a well-documented example of collective human decision-making, with voting data available for elections globally over several decades. SFI Complexity Postdoctoral Fellow Aanjaneya Kumar, along with former colleagues at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) Pune, analyzed election data from 34 countries and devised a mathematical model to study if a universal behavior emerges in elections.

• AI program plays the long game to solve decades-old math problems

  A game of chess requires its players to think several moves ahead, a skill that computer programs have mastered over the years. Back in 1996, an IBM supercomputer famously beat the then world chess champion Garry Kasparov. Later, in 2017, an artificial intelligence (AI) program developed by Google DeepMind, called AlphaZero, triumphed over the best computerized chess engines of the time after training itself to play the game in a matter of hours.

• Can math save content creators? A new model proposes fairer revenue distribution methods for streaming services

  As more consumers turn to subscription-based platforms, the distribution of revenue in streaming services has become a crucial issue in the digital economy. Content creators and artists argue that the current models are opaque, frequently neglecting the needs of creators.

• Scientists analyze branch patterns in trees and art, from da Vinci to Mondrian

  The math that describes the branching pattern of trees in nature also holds for trees depicted in art—and may even underlie our ability to recognize artworks as depictions of trees.

• The butterfly effect: This obscure mathematical concept has become an everyday idea, but do we have it all wrong?

  In 1972, the US meteorologist Edward Lorenz asked a now-famous question: "Does the flap of a butterfly's wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas?"

• Risk it or kick it? Research analyzes NFL coaches' risk tolerance on fourth down

  During the Super Bowl, every decision matters. With millions of fans watching, the game often comes down to a single play call. And no call is more scrutinized than what a coach decides to do on fourth down. Punt? Attempt a field goal? Or go for it?