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Two recent studies say that people who work a lot of overtime hours are at a higher risk of developing depression than people who work regular hours. This calls for a simple mathematical formula. More »
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While we admire the clear desire for efficient pedagogy displayed by teachers at Beaver Ridge Elementary in Norcross, Ga., we can't help but feel that there is probably a better history lesson to include in math problems than "slavery," or maybe a better way to teach students about slavery than by providing them with questions like "Each tree had 56 oranges. If eight slaves pick them equally, then how much would each slave pick?" (For the record: seven.) More »
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Anyone who knows anything about anything knows that birds, of all animals, are not to be trusted. Have you seen a bird, recently, doing its little bird things (pecking?), acting as though its brain is the size of a Sno-Cap? Well, guess what: birds can do math. Higher math. More »
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What is it with kids these days? Amirite? You know what I'm talking about. In this particular case, I'm talking about how kids in elementary and middle school have, sure, okay, improved their standardized test scores in math over the past two decades—but in reading, there's been only "modest improvement." Kids these days! From the NYT: More »
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You think you're living in the year "2011," when America has long since left its ugly legacy of racism behind, until you read something like this: companies are still using Asian people as "tech experts," in commercials. Free your minds! More »
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Maybe it's because parents aren't getting married these days due to the decay of the moral fiber of our nation and with it any chance we had for keeping ourselves on the side of righteousness and god's glory, but man: parents these days sure are dumb. About everything, sure, but specifically about their stupid kids' stupid schools: More »
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For allegedly stealing a 24-ounce can of Steel Reserve, Victoria Hill of Boise, Idaho now faces up to ten years behind bars. Officers charged her with felony burglary, because she stuck the beer in her purse and walked by some cash registers—thereby indicating "intent." More »
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It's only noon, and already the Dow has dropped by 325 241 336 points. Terror. Panic. Uncertainty. Fear. Should you dump all of your stocks and stash the cash while you still can? No. No. No! More »
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New math! Fancier chips! Higgs Boson! Humongous fungus! Acid bases! Sea monster! Asteroid pictures! Fecal bleed! And everyone's best friend is dropping in for the summer! It's your Monday Science Watch, where we watch science—not that you would understand! More »
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Gird your loins, everyone, because with Thor opening this weekend, the long summer slog of superhero movies is upon us. Some of them are so good, but some of them are so damn crappy. That's why I've devised a simple formula to figure out which is which. More »
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Apparently Tyra Banks and Vogue editor Andre Leon Talley have a web show called "Fa-Fa-Fa Fashion," in which they feint and shriek and perform trippy skits about Tyra pissing herself. (A reenactment of this?) More »
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Panasonic's North American headquarters are currently located in Secaucus, New Jersey. Today, the company plans to sign a lease to move its headquarters ten miles down the road to Newark, New Jersey. Why? Because the state of New Jersey paid them more than $100 million (in the form of tax breaks) to do so. More »
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Last week, we noted the growing backlash against the mighty Groupon by businesses (and employees) who are starting to think that Groupon's offerings aren't so great. More plainly: some believe Groupon and its clones should all be destroyed. More »
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Prepare to feel very dumb while listening to this mathematician explain the problems with pi. Be warned, she talks very fast and makes tasty looking pies to illustrate her point. More »
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Old galaxies! Nabokov butterflies! Milk safety! Insomnia relief! Cell timers! Solar sails! Bat naps! Math extinctions! Ovulation dreams! Breast chips! It's your Wednesday Science Watch, where we watch science—wackily, come on! More »
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"What can you learn from the top performing stocks of 2010?" Since that headline is in USA Today, the answer is automatically "nothing." The bigger question: can we learn anything from any stock market forecast, at all? More »
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Anthropology debate! Brain hearing! Jock myth! Unique fingerprints! Estrogen breast-rogen! Smallest battery! And gay mice marriage! It's your Friday Science Watch, where we watch science—if you can call it that! More »
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The U.S. State Department's green card lottery this year drew a record 15 million applications for 50,000 available green cards. Which means this lottery's odds are approximately 150,000 times better than the New York Lottery's odds . [WSJ] More »
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The Way We Live Now: not studiously. We'll break it down as patriotically as possible: America wasn't built by a bunch of nerd boys in pocket protectors playing calculator games called "math." America was built by men! Poor, math-illiterate men. More »
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Alan Newton (pictured) was convicted of rape and jailed 22 years before being cleared by DNA evidence in 2006. Yesterday, a jury awarded him $18.5 million in compensation. Is that enough? More »
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Benoît Mandelbrot, the French-American mathematician known for his work with fractal geometry, died on Thursday. Mandelbrot lent his name to the Mandelbrot set—the very beautiful, stoner-friendly mathematical object in this video. More »
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A historical tally of Nobel Prize winners shows that Americans have racked up 323 awards, more than twice as many as any other country. The U.S. leads in every category except literature, which is for sissies anyway. Take that, statistics! More »
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In NYC, two-thirds of primary schools saw their scores decline in progress reports. In Chicago, parents are holding a sit-in protest to save their children's after-school center. Only the suburban schools are properly educating kids. By treating them like idiots. More »
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The Way We Live Now: Quantifordably. We don't actually need to change our current situation; we simply need to become more satisfied with it. For what is money but a number? And what is a number but...magic? I don't know. More »
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Working from his custom-built home computer, Japanese engineer Shigeru Kondo used American programmer Alexander Yee's software y-cruncher to calculate pi to 5 trillion decimal places, a new record. Kondo's wife and mother, when told, expressed "no particular feelings." How... irrational! More »
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Despite the fact that college degrees are worthless, kids these days are scrambling to attend any school, no matter how fake, out of desperation. The real victims: the colleges. What are they going to do with all you kids? More »
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Finally, some good news, from a new Congressional report: fewer and fewer poor kids are going to college. Fantastic. Leave that money-sucking scam camp for the richies. More »
]]> http://gawker.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5581709&view=rss&microfeed=true We support this mathemagical campaign to name 10 to the 27th power a "Hella." More »
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A British scientist says he's discovered a secret code in the works of the ancient Greek philosopher Plato. What is "the hidden philosophy of Plato"? And how can we market it? More »
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Back in the good old days (ten years ago), rich countries accounted for the majority of the world's GDP, as has been the good and proper economic custom since the times of Pontius Pilate. Not any more! More »
]]> http://gawker.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5572714&view=rss&microfeed=true Martin Gardner, amateur mathematician, puzzle writer and dumb-people hater, died this weekend at age 95. More »
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Spanish mathematician Jose-Manuel Rey has calculated the "second thermodynamic law for sentimental interaction" and charted the trajectory of "sentimental equilibrium." Just like a relationship that is falling apart, it is as complicated as it is inscrutable. More »
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A new study of future math teachers around the world gave Americans a grade of "C" when it comes to being smart in math, by math teacher standards. Which is just fine. Until you see who beat us. More »
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The Way We Live Now: Spending ourselves to death. The way we're unable to comprehend simple arithmetic, you'd think we were all educated in America's public schools. Hmm, what's everything we have minus everything? Can we still afford a VitaminWater? More »
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Let us celebrate this most nerdy 3.14 with a videos of preternaturally intelligent children reciting hundreds of digits of pi from memory. They can't tie their shoes, but they could balance your checkbook. More »
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We here at Gawker were very saddened to learn today that our arch-nemesis Nikki Finke's Deadline.com beat us in traffic last month. Our boss is gonna kill us! Lucky for us, it's not true. At all. More »
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The Way We Live Now: Like a smooth criminal. Well, "smooth" is not quite the right word. Desperate? Yes. And occasionally inept. There are no banks left to rob. There's no bull market left to milk! More »
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Number-talkin' scientists report that Americans can speak English and count to ten, but not at the same time. A study shows that our brains perceive the vowel sounds in "two" to represent something large, while the vowel sounds in "three" represent something small (in our brains, still). So people estimated that a $3 item marked down to $2.22 was actually more expensive than a $3 item marked down to $2.33. More »
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This article today does us all a great service by reminding us to remind you that numerology—like the concept of juice-based "cleansing" systems—is bullshit. If you believe in it, stop now. It is so dumb. More »
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After the New York Times announced that it's cutting 100 more newsroom jobs, guess what happened, virally? Many commenters begged to be allowed to pay for the paper's online content! Is this the NYT's salvation? Ha, no. More »
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