Posts in Category ‘Allgemein’
The Collaboration Paradox
Paul Erdős is undisputedly the most prolific mathematician to ever have lived. He published over 1500 papers while he was alive, and worked with over 500 collaborators. It is perhaps the number of collaborators which stands out even more so than the number of papers published.
Though it may seem paradoxical, most people have fewer collaborators than their own collaborators do on average. This is known as the “friendship” paradox and is normally framed as your friends having, on average, more friends than you. Read more
The Mathematician’s Essay: An Old Format for a New AI Era
At a time in which AI is revolutionizing the practice of mathematics – in some areas overtaking human capabilities – mathematicians are turning to the old-fashioned essay to express their thoughts on where humans could and should fit into the equation. Read more
Happy (Belated) 2026
It is customary in January to write a blog post containing mathematical facts about the year. For us maths writers, 2025 truly was a gift, and you can see just why in Katie’s excellent post last year. But the chances of having two consecutive years with so many fun facts are, as one might expect, small. So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that there is a dearth of interesting facts about 2026.
But do not fear! This is not going to be a list of anti-facts, of things that are not true about the number 2026. There is one fact that is so fun that I think it might blow all the 2025 facts out the water. Read more
A Random Walk on the Wild Side
It is midnight in New York. A drunkard sets off from home, and goes for a walk. In their inebriation, at each crossroads they randomly choose a direction with equal probability. North with probability ¼. East with probability ¼. South with probability ¼. West with probability ¼. Will they find their way home?
This is an example of what is called a random walk. A random walk is a process by which your location is determined from a sequence of random steps. Read more
