The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. The simplest ideas in mathematics can also be the most perplexing. Take addition. It’s a straightforward operation: One of the first ...

Adam Hayes, Ph.D., CFA, is a financial writer with 15+ years Wall Street experience as a derivatives trader. Besides his extensive derivative trading expertise, Adam is an expert in economics and ...

The most powerful formula in physics starts with a slender S, the symbol for a sort of sum known as an integral. Further along comes a second S, representing a quantity known as action. Together, ...

A long-standing puzzle seems to constrain how addition and multiplication relate to each other. A graduate student has gone further than anyone else in establishing the connection. In 1983 the ...