The Hechinger Report covers one topic: education. Sign up for our newsletters to have stories delivered to your inbox. Consider becoming a member to support our nonprofit journalism. Why do so many ...

The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. All of modern mathematics is built on the foundation of set theory, the study of how to organize abstract collections of objects. But in ...

THE mathematicians’ version of nothing is the empty set. This is a collection that doesn’t actually contain anything, such as my own collection of vintage Rolls-Royces. The empty set may seem a bit ...