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Too many top minds have “positive capability” bias. That label usefully contrasts with Keats’ “negative capability,” a poetic idea that applies to many unpoetic experts. It explains why Shakespeare’s psychology is better than much of the modern “scientific” sort. 

While some school districts have experimented with holding classes via the internet during bad weather, the format isn’t wholly feasible for all subjects.

People hate mathematics because they fear and don’t understand it. Mathematician Edward Frenkel envisions a world where that’s no longer an issue.

A British academic’s remarks that “it’s inevitable that students will be allowed to use the Internet in exams” sparks a debate over the purpose of testing and the encouragement of learning.

There is no sense whatsoever that we are on the same page here, working toward some roughly agreed upon vision of a better future.

While advanced math and Shakespeare combine to make a nightmare curriculum for some students, for artist Man Ray, one of the most intriguing minds of 20th century art, they were “such stuff as dreams are made on,” or at least art could be made from. A new exhibition at The Phillips Collection reunites the objects and photographs with the suite of paintings they inspired Man Ray to create and title Shakespearean Equations. Man Ray—Human Equations: A Journey from Mathematics to Shakespeare traces the artist’s travels between disciplines, between war-torn continents, and between media that became not only a journey from arithmetic to the Bard, but also a journey of artistic self-discovery.

“The most important thing we can do is inspire young minds and to advance the kind of science, math and technology education that will help youngsters take us to the next phase of space travel.”

How much homework should students do each night? One group of researcher says 70 minutes strikes the perfect balance.

When parents offer too much praise, their children become narcissistic as a result, believing themselves to be naturally superior to their peers and deserving of special treatment from authority figures.

Brands this. Brands that. Brands on Twitter. Brands on Facebook. The new age of brand storytelling isn’t going away anytime soon. The least companies can do is spare us the air of artificiality. 

Elementary students in the Anaheim City School District, located just outside Los Angeles, have partnered with local professional teams to teach science lessons based on sports.

The success of a decades-long attempt to boost female achievement has revealed a troubling new gender gap: the rise of the unskilled, underemployed male.

If all the random motions of the molecules inside aligned, how far and fast would it go? “Millions saw the apple fall, but Newton was the one who asked why.”-Bernard […]

What happens when you let a computer determine each child’s personalized curriculum? Math teachers in several schools across America are seeing results through a growing brand of “blended learning.”

In January, Andrew Cuomo, the governor of New York, threw down the gauntlet on education in his State of the State Address: “Last year, less than 1 percent of teachers in New […]

What the first American woman in space meant for people everywhere. “Each generation goes further than the generation preceding it because it stands on the shoulders of that generation. You […]

Theorems are gold in math. But in physics? The Universe will surprise you. “What we need is more people who specialize in the impossible.”–Theodore Roethke Physics is one of the […]

Nature’s games aren’t all “red in tooth and claw” competitions. Evolution also contains cooperation. And Game Theory provides the tools (“behavioral telescopes”) to show how cooperation can improve evolutionary fitness. 

On a wide range of contentious issues, academics and researchers publish work that pretends to offer objective evidence, but which on closer inspection turns out to be advocacy masquerading behind intellectualisms, scientific methodology, footnotes and citations, and erudite language. A recent example is a paper by Nassim Nicholas Taleb and colleagues arguing that genetically modified foods pose such a risk to life on Earth that agricultural biotechnology should be banned under a strict application of the Precautionary Principle.

The level of education a mother has at the time she gives birth is an accurate predictor of her child’s academic success, especially in the areas of math and reading, according to a new study.

He hasn’t shot an episode of Let’s Make a Deal for decades, but Monty Hall’s name still graces a statistical brouhaha from the early 1990s, and the drama he cultivated on […]

With three spatial dimensions, the possibilities are tremendous. But only one answer fits what we see. “Never erase your past. It shapes who you are today and will help you […]

Image credit: © 2015 MotorTrend Magazine, via http://www.motortrend.com/roadtests/suvs/1110_mopar_underground_jeep_and_ram_run_wild_at_moab/photo_06.html. How gravity teaches us that the mountains we see extend far underground. “Journalists often ask me when I go to the field, […]

How one of the first tests of special relativity might lead to the greatest particle accelerator of all-time. “One feels that the past stays the way you left it, whereas […]

The research linking fast food to obesity is well-known, but new studies show it may be impacting early brain development in children.

How “faith” in the Universe destroyed two brilliant men of genius. “I don’t like it, and I’m sorry I ever had anything to do with it.” –Schrödinger The idea that […]

How the show most likely isn’t sending home the right people every week. Image credit: NBC Universal / The Biggest Loser, Season 13 finale. “Our external environment no longer seems […]

Educators hold up scientists like Neil deGrasse Tyson and Marie Curie as heroes in order to encourage minorities to pursue studies in STEM fields. But portraying these figures as larger-than-life may intimidate students.

It’s what holds the nuclei in atoms together, overcoming electric repulsion. But how does it work? “I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn’t say […]

If somebody tells you the risk of something is “1 in a million” or “1 in ten thousand” or even “1 in ten”, you still don’t know nearly enough to gauge how big or small that risk actually is. Get more information before you decide how worried to be.