In the third century BCE, Apollonius of Perga asked how many circles one could draw that would touch three given circles at exactly one point each. It would take 1,800 years to prove the answer: eight ...

Dr. Fryer is a professor of economics at Harvard University, founder of Equal Opportunity Ventures and a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. Call it MAG: mutually assured gerrymandering. First ...

Can you imagine the imprint a four-dimensional hexagon might leave as it passes through your three-dimensional kitchen table? Probably not, but some people can. One such person was mathematician ...

Soon to be the official tool for managing Python installations on Windows, the new Python Installation Manager picks up where the ‘py’ launcher left off. Python is a first-class citizen on Microsoft ...

Physicists recently mapped the hidden shape that underlies the quantum behaviors of a crystal, using a new method that’s expected to become ubiquitous. Famously, at the quantum scale, particles can be ...

Katie has a PhD in maths, specializing in the intersection of dynamical systems and number theory. She reports on topics from maths and history to society and animals. Katie has a PhD in maths, ...

What exactly is Python and what is MicroPython? The major differences between both languages. Some use cases for each. As difficult as it is to imagine, the Python programming language made its ...

The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. In the fall of 2022, a Princeton University graduate student named Carolina Figueiredo stumbled onto a massive coincidence. She ...

An experimental ‘no-GIL’ build mode in Python 3.13 disables the Global Interpreter Lock to enable true parallel execution in Python. Here’s where to start. The single biggest new feature in Python ...