Built on Facts

Yesterday was the Idaho Republican primary. As far as primaries go it wasn’t very meaningful, since the presumptive nominee has already almost certainly wrapped things up. The Democratic nomination is not quite so certain, but we’re getting to the point where there’s realistically not much doubt remaining as to the outcome.
How can we [...]

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John Derbyshire, writing in his beautiful book Prime Obsession, talks of a conversation he had with the mathematician Andrew Odlyzko. Derbyshire asked if he though the Riemann Hypothesis was true or not. The truth or falsehood of that hypothesis is the most importnat problem in mathematics, but despite more than a century of [...]

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