Massively multiplayer online games are increasingly becoming a tool for researchers to study online, and sometimes offline, behavior. From outbreaks to what avatars say about psychology, researchers ...

You're currently following this author! Want to unfollow? Unsubscribe via the link in your email. You probably haven't thought of fractals since your high school geometry class, but there's a chance ...

How long is a country’s border? That’s the seemingly simple question mathematician Lewis Fry Richardson asked himself more than 75 years ago. The thing that puzzled him was that the length of the ...

Fractals, self-replicating patterns seen at varying scales, are a fascinating phenomena found widely in nature, from snowflakes to ferns and coastlines. But did you know that fractals can also be used ...

Benoit Mandelbrot, the mathematics professor at Yale who coined the word "fractal," passed away on October 14 at the age of 85. His death recalls the complicated history of his life's work -- the ...

When Harry Potter first went to Hogwarts, he caught his train from Kings Cross, platform 9¾. The idea of a platform between two whole numbers might seem impossible to imagine. However, for someone ...

It’s virtually impossible to determine the exact length of a natural coastline. The problem is of knowing where to stop—or if a stopping point even exists. To completely measure the coastline, one ...

This week, Business Insider has been running a series of math tricks, statistical rules and trading patterns that have investors split in two: skeptics and fanatics. Today we continue with a concept ...

Fractals commonly show up in nature, from spiral-shaped seashells to heads of cauliflower. Now physicists have found these complex, self-repeating patterns in a very unnatural spot: laser light. Peer ...