Receive emails about upcoming NOVA programs and related content, as well as featured reporting about current events through a science lens. Symmetry also has an aesthetic meaning, although this is ...

Several fields of mathematics have developed in total isolation, using their own 'undecipherable' coded languages. Mathematicians now present 'big algebras,' a two-way mathematical 'dictionary' ...

This jingle has helped generations of algebra students recall the quadratic formula that solves every equation of the form $latex ax^2+bx+c=0$. The formula is as ...

Symmetry is everywhere in our natural world. Just take a look at your hands, a butterfly, or a sunflower. It’s easy to pass off the idea of symmetry and symmetric structures as a simple quirk of ...

We study cubature formulas for d-dimensional integrals with an arbitrary symmetric weight function of product form. We present a construction that yields a high polynomial exactness: for fixed degree ...