Most games that pit two players or teams against each other require one of them to make the first play. This results in a built-in asymmetry, and the question arises: Should you go first or second?

Steven Strogatz — the acclaimed mathematician and author — hosts the new Quanta Magazine podcast “The Joy of Why.” On March 18, 2022, he joined Quanta editor Thomas Lin for a Simons Foundation ...

Introduction to ciphers and substitution. Alice and Bob and Carl and Julius: terminology and Caesar Cipher ; The key to the matter: generalizing the Caesar Cipher ; Multiplicative ciphers ; Affine ...

For more than a century, Srinivasa Ramanujan’s uncanny formulas for the number pi have looked like pure mathematical fireworks, dazzling but detached from the physical world. Now a new wave of ...