Receive emails about upcoming NOVA programs and related content, as well as featured reporting about current events through a science lens. Symmetry also has an aesthetic meaning, although this is ...

Math scholar and alumna Carolyn Yackel uses fiber arts to explore some of the most fundamental patterns in geometry ...

There's a part of the brain that enables us to perceive magnitude -- we can compare loudness when hearing different tones or compare the number of dots in a group at a glance. Neuroscientists have ...

Why do some melodies feel instantly right, balanced, memorable and satisfying, even if you have never heard them before? New research from the University of Waterloo suggests that more than creativity ...

On the road to algebra, children must learn a weird idea: that numbers can be smaller than zero (negative) and can be mixed with numbers greater than zero (positive) in an equation. Now researchers at ...

The 2008 Abel Prize was awarded to John Griggs Thompson of the University of Florida and Jacques Tits of the Collège de France for their contributions to group theory, the mathematical field that ...

A shape has a line of symmetry when the folded part sits perfectly on top with all edges matching. The number of lines of symmetry in a regular polygon is equal to the number of sides. A shape has ...

Breakthroughs in physics sometimes require an assist from the field of mathematics—and vice versa. In 1912, Albert Einstein, then a 33-year-old theoretical physicist at the Eidgenössische Technische ...