In a new book, the mathematical epidemiologist Adam Kucharski explains how certainty, even in math, can be an illusion.

“I read a book in undergrad called A Panorama ... now co-authors of a yet-to-be-peer-reviewed proof heralded by Eyal Lubetzky, chair of the mathematics department at the Courant Institute ...

Classic proof by induction involves showing a relationship between, say, a value of 1 and a value of 2. If you can turn those concrete values into a generalization using mathematical notation ...

The proof has to prove that no solutions exist ... father's library and chanced upon Jean-Étienne Montucla's book History of Mathematics. The chapter that caught her imagination was Montucla's ...

AW: In a mathematical proof you have a line of reasoning consisting ... Sometimes that would involve going and looking it up in a book to see how it's done there. Sometimes it was a question ...