The Mathematics Portal
Mathematics is the study of representing and reasoning about abstract objects (such as numbers, points, spaces, sets, structures, and games). Mathematics is used throughout the world as an essential tool in many fields, including natural science, engineering, medicine, and the social sciences. Applied mathematics, the branch of mathematics concerned with application of mathematical knowledge to other fields, inspires and makes use of new mathematical discoveries and sometimes leads to the development of entirely new mathematical disciplines, such as statistics and game theory. Mathematicians also engage in pure mathematics, or mathematics for its own sake, without having any application in mind. There is no clear line separating pure and applied mathematics, and practical applications for what began as pure mathematics are often discovered. (Full article...)
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- ... that mathematics professor Ari Nagel has fathered more than a hundred children?
- ... that Arithmetic was the first mathematics text book written in the Russian language?
- ... that a folded paper lantern shows that certain mathematical definitions of surface area are incorrect?
- ... that according to one critic, the math rock album Cryptooology by Yowie "sounds like an explosion in a Slinky factory"?
- ... that The Math Myth advocates for American high schools to stop requiring advanced algebra?
- ... that the discovery of Descartes' theorem in geometry came from a too-difficult mathematics problem posed to a princess?
- ... that mathematician Daniel Larsen was the youngest contributor to the New York Times crossword puzzle?
- ... that more than 60 scientific papers authored by mathematician Paul Erdős were published posthumously?
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- ...that it is not possible to configure two mutually inscribed quadrilaterals in the Euclidean plane, but the Möbius–Kantor graph describes a solution in the complex projective plane?
- ...that the six permutations of the vector (1,2,3) form a hexagon in 3D space, the 24 permutations of (1,2,3,4) form a truncated octahedron in four dimensions, and both are examples of permutohedra?
- ...that the Rule 184 cellular automaton can simultaneously model the behavior of cars moving in traffic, the accumulation of particles on a surface, and particle-antiparticle annihilation reactions?
- ...that a cyclic cellular automaton is a system of simple mathematical rules that can generate complex patterns mixing random chaos, blocks of color, and spirals?
- ...that a nonconvex polygon with three convex vertices is called a pseudotriangle?
- ...that the axiom of choice is logically independent of the other axioms of Zermelo–Fraenkel set theory?
- ...that the Pythagorean Theorem generalizes to any three similar shapes on the three sides of a right-angled triangle?
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All of the trigonometric functions of an angle θ can be constructed geometrically in terms of a unit circle centered at O. Image credit: User:Tttrung |
The trigonometric functions are functions of an angle; they are most important when studying triangles and modeling periodic phenomena, among many other applications. They are commonly defined as ratios of two sides of a right triangle containing the angle, and can equivalently be defined as the lengths of various line segments from a unit circle. More modern definitions express them as infinite series or as solutions of certain differential equations, allowing their extension to positive and negative values and even to complex numbers.
The study of trigonometric functions dates back to Babylonian times, and a considerable amount of fundamental work was done by ancient Greek, Indian and Arab mathematicians. (Full article...)
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