"...as the number of pieces in a set grows, so do the number of piece types. However, the number of piece types grows sublinearly: while a larger set uses more piece types, as sets becomes larger, they use progressively fewer additional piece types (so larger sets actually use fewer types per piece). This is similar to other sublinear curves, where larger animals use less energy per cell for metabolism or larger cities actually need fewer gas stations per capita. Essentially, larger sets become more efficient, using the same pieces that smaller sets do, but in a more complex and diverse way."

David Lynch, mathematics, Paris.

"In 2003, Paignton Zoo carried out a practical test by putting a keyboard connected to a PC into the cage of six crested macaques. After a month the monkeys had produced five pages of the letter "S" and had broken the keyboard."

O_o

but bankers can't

Interesting references to efforts to model the causes and incidences of war

Another version of the E8 story. Astonishingly dumb comments. If this is the popular reaction to a successful theory of everything, we're doomed

Is E8 the key to the universe?

"Programming the 2,3 Turing machine 'to calculate 2 + 2 ... would take up more memory than any known computer contains.'"

"The painting is laid out like a motion picture in five frames of increasing geometrisation"

When it comes to photons, sometimes less really is more

“All this sophisticated data analysis and it comes down to where you put the biscuits”

And a profile of Ramanujan himself

Profile of the writer and director of A Disappearing Number

"There may be myriad ways of viewing reality, each based on its own topos ... every physical system - from an electron to the whole universe - has a unique mathematical identity that dictates how it will appear when viewed through ... a particular topos

"People use inhibitory control when they decide to take different routes to their jobs, because they have to make a conscious effort to override the regular route they otherwise would almost automatically follow. Although the researchers found a correlati

You'd have to play thousands of games to find out who should really win the League

They're all lucky

No maths required?

"That only makes it all the more clear that [Pythagorus] belongs to the history of politically intrusive religious movements, not to the history of philosophy or science. Even less does he deserve his traditional place in the history of mathematics."

Mapping music in non-Euclidean spaces

Science magazine's top accolade for 2006 goes to Grigori Perelman

Question: Why is this man being allowed to teach children? Also: Is the BBC News on crack?

Is the number 42 really the key to linking prime numbers and subatomic physics?

A profile of Grigory Perelman, who's just turned down the Clay prize for his proof of the Poincaré conjecture. He might not want his Fields Medal either

Using Monte Carlo simulation to prove Eurovision is rigged. Yikes.

Is gravity weak because it "leaks" across from a higher-dimensional space?

Mathematica meets ringtones (!)

Moderately interesting collection of opinions - some predictable, some less so - divided between comments on the scientific method and on scientific facts