Dan Bricklin changed the world forever when he codeveloped VisiCalc, the first electronic spreadsheet and grandfather of programs you probably use every day like Microsoft excel and Google Sheets. Join the software engineer and computing...

How do you defeat a creature that grows two heads for every one head you chop off? You do the math.

What is a vector? Is it an arrow in space? A list of numbers?

Often people make decisions that are not "rational" from a purely economical point of view - meaning that they don't necessarily lead to the best result. Why is that? Are we just bad at dealing with numbers and odds? Or is there a...

What exactly is a topological space?

In a dystopian world, your resistance group is humanity's last hope. Unfortunately, you've all been captured by the tyrannical rulers and brought to the ancient coliseum for their deadly entertainment. Will you be able to solve the...

The enigmatic equation e^{pi i} = -1 is usually explained using Taylor's formula during a calculus class. This video offers a different perspective, which involves thinking about numbers as actions, and about e^x as something which...

Symmetric keys are essential to encrypting messages. How can two people share the same key without someone else getting a hold of it? Upfront asymmetric encryption is one way, but another is Diffie-Hellman key exchange.

A beutiful derivation of a formula for pi. At first, 1-1/3+1/5-1/7+1/9-.... seems unrelated to circles, but in fact there is a circle hiding here, as well as some interesting facts about prime numbers in the context of complex numbers.

Our mood is influenced in many ways by our environment, and researchers have discovered a possible connection between the pollen in our air and a rise in suicide.

Problem 2 from the 2011 IMO

Only if you are truly open to the possibility of being wrong can you ever learn, says researcher Alex Edmans. In an insightful talk, he explores how confirmation bias -- the tendency to only accept information that supports your personal...

Though the first written number system can be dated back to 2500 years ago in Mesopotamia, a zero-like symbol did not appear until 7th century CE India. Jessica Oreck and Rachael Teel track the evolution of zero from a dot to the symbol...

The enigmatic equation e^{pi i} = -1 is usually explained using Taylor's formula during a calculus class. This video offers a different perspective, which involves thinking about numbers as actions, and about e^x as something which turns...

A beutiful derivation of a formula for pi. At first, 1-1/3+1/5-1/7+1/9-.... seems unrelated to circles, but in fact there is a circle hiding here, as well as some interesting facts about prime numbers in the context of complex numbers.

We'll soon be capable of building self-replicating robots. This will not only change humanity's future but reshape the galaxy as we know it.

It seems silly to ask if plants can count, but even the New York Times has called Venus flytraps 'Plants That Can Count.' Is counting a thing plants can do?

This is an absolutely beautiful piece of math. It shows how certain ideas from topology, such as the mobius strip, can be used to solve a slightly softer form of an unsolved problem in geometry.

At TED2010, mathematics legend Benoit Mandelbrot develops a theme he first discussed at TED in 1984 -- the extreme complexity of roughness, and the way that fractal math can find order within patterns that seem unknowably complicated.

Vaccines teach your immune system to recognize pathogens, but sometimes your body needs a bit of a reminder.

Problem 2 from the 2011 IMO

We are embarrassingly unaware of how divided our societies are, and Brexit grew out of a deep, unexamined divide between those that fear globalization and those that embrace it, says social scientist Alexander Betts. How do we now...

A vaccination to protect against allergic asthma may be in sight, as scientists this week publish promising results in mice. Also, the California Condor is making a comeback, and its genome is looking great!

What is the derivative of a^x? Why is e^x its own derivative? This video shows how to think about the rule for differentiating exponential functions.