Remember the graph paper you used at school, the kind that's covered with tiny squares? It's the perfect illustration of what mathematicians call a "periodic tiling of space", with shapes covering an ...
Remember the graph paper you used at school, the kind that’s covered with tiny squares? It’s the perfect illustration of what mathematicians call a “periodic tiling of space”, with shapes covering an ...
Patterns appear widely throughout nature and math, from the Fibonacci spirals of sea shells to the periodicity of crystals. But certain math problems can sometimes trick the human solver into seeing a ...
Zebras and tigers have stripes, cheetahs and leopards have spots, and the ocellated lizard (Timon lepidus) boasts a labyrinthine pattern of black-and-green chains of scales. Now researchers from the ...
Why do humans love to look at patterns? I can only guess, but I’ve written a whole book about new mathematical ways to make them. In Creating Symmetry, The Artful Mathematics of Wallpaper Patterns, I ...