As an undergraduate at the University of Chile, Bernardo Subercaseaux took a dim view of using computers to do math. It seemed antithetical to real intellectual discovery. “There’s some instinct or ...

Imagine placing oranges or tennis balls into a rigid container. How can the balls be arranged such that they occupy the largest volume fraction of the container, otherwise known as the largest packing ...

How to safely reopen offices, schools and other public spaces while keeping people six feet apart comes down to a question mathematicians have been studying for centuries. Sphere packing might seem ...

Winter means tangerines. The joy of sitting in a warm room and peeling tangerines until your fingers turn yellow is a luxury that can only be savored in winter. As I was eating tangerines, I looked at ...