Humans are usually pretty good at recognizing when they get things wrong, but artificial intelligence systems are not. According to a new study, AI generally suffers from inherent limitations due to a ...

Mathematics often feels straightforward, yet some results challenge the way people instinctively think about numbers. Certain paradoxes and probability problems produce answers that seem impossible at ...

Katie has a PhD in maths, specializing in the intersection of dynamical systems and number theory. She reports on topics from maths and history to society and animals. Katie has a PhD in maths, ...

A pair of researchers, one with The Simons Centre for the Study of Living Machines in India, the other with the University of Illinois in the U.S., has built a model to explain a paradox of plankton.

A heterological word is one that does not describe itself. Does "heterological" describe itself?

Have you played the puzzle game Tangram? I remember, as a child, being fascinated by how just seven simple wooden triangles and other shapes could offer endless entertainment. Unlike LEGO, the Tangram ...

Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. You have probably encountered the base rate fallacy, and it probably fooled you. Part mathematical paradox and part cognitive bias ...

Editor’s Note: Published in 1957, this article comes from Martin Gardner’s legendary Scientific American column Mathematical Games. Read more in our special digital issue, Fun and Games. A paradox is ...