Idea person: Glen Rosenbaum, a partner at the law firm Vinson & Elkins LLP. Big idea: Showcase history through model train room. Where it came from: In the early '50s, when Rosenbaum was three or four ...

The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. The simplest ideas in mathematics can also be the most perplexing. Take addition. It’s a straightforward operation: One of the first ...

Here are some numbers that help explain why jaws drop at the first sight of the model-train set that tech entrepreneur Peter Hambling is having built in the basement of his Medina family home: • The ...

Set tests belong to a class of statistical regression models that enable testing for statistical dependencies between sets of genetic variants and a quantitative trait of interest. Within the linear ...

A team of four prominent mathematicians, including two Fields medalists, proved a conjecture described as a “holy grail of additive combinatorics.” Within a month, a loose collaboration verified it ...

A new proof illuminates the hidden patterns that emerge when addition becomes impossible. The simplest ideas in mathematics can also be the most perplexing. Take addition. It’s a straightforward ...