Kenneth Appel, who along with Wolfgang Haken, in 1976 gave the first proof of the four-color theorem, died on April 19, 2013, at the age of 80.

Appel was employed as an actuary and also served in the U.S. Army before completing his Ph.D. in mathematics in 1959. After...

E.O. Wilson is truly one of the great scientists of our time. In addition to his very extensive portfolio of important and painstaking academic publications, he has won two Pulitzer prizes for general nonfiction. Wilson has fearlessly ventured into arenas such as sociobiology (applications of evolutionary biology to social behavior) and...

Ever since the dawn of mathematics (e.g., in ancient Greece, c. 250 B.C.) and decimal computation (e.g., in India, c. 200 A.D.), people have wondered whether the digits of the number we call pi (= 3.1415926535...) are "random." Answering, or at least studying, this question spurred mathematicians from Archimedes, who...

On February 21, 2013, the city council of Sebastopol, California (a small suburb north of San Francisco) adopted a resolution attempting to ban the installation of smart meters by Pacific Gas and Electric, claiming that the devices pose "potential risks to the health, safety and welfare of Sebastopol residents."...

It has been conventional wisdom that computing is the "third leg" of the stool of modern science, complementing theory and experiment. But that metaphor is no longer accurate. Instead, computing now pervades all of science, including theory and experiment. Nowadays massive computation is required just to reduce and analyze experimental...

With movements such as young-earth creationism, we certainly have seen examples of religion being shanghaied into the service of anti-science. But some recent rhetoric in opposition to environmentalism and climate change science takes the cake.

For example, E. Calvin Beisner, leader of the Cornwall Alliance (a consortium of evangelical clergy)...

In an interview with GQ, Florida Senator Marco Rubio, who has been mentioned as a rising star and potential U.S. presidential candidate in 2016, was asked "How old do you think the Earth is?" He responded:

At the end of the day, I think there are multiple theories out...

The political world is seldom a source of high scholarship, but the current U.S. presidential campaign sets new lows. In addition to the worse-than-normal avoidance of substantive issues, and a very unpleasant level of mudslinging, numerical literacy has hit a new low. Here are some telling examples:

Republican presidential hopeful...

A few days ago, Andrew Hacker, an author and former professor of political science at Queens College in New York City, created quite a stir with a New York Times op-ed entitled Is Algebra Necessary?, in which he argues that it is no longer necessary to expect the vast...

Introduction

In "postmodern science studies" or "postmodern philosophy of science," scholars critique science and mathematics from a high-level meta-perspective. Two of these writers, Karl Popper and Thomas Kuhn, in the view of many scientists, have significant merit and are worth taking seriously, although both published their most influential books 50...

The 1968 movie 2001: A Space Odyssey was a landmark science-fiction film, in many ways far ahead of its time. With the recent release of a 1080p Blu-ray video version, home viewers can enjoy nearly the same stunning level of graphics and visual effects of the original big-screen theater release....

Games are as old as human society as the image below illustrates. But as with all other parts of society, games and gaming are being profoundly changed by the computing and communication revolution.

Some of the changes are obvious, some are less...