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Geography Health History Mathematics Natural sciences People Philosophy Religion Society Technology edit The Mathematics Portal Abacus Abacus Mathematics is the study of numbers, quantity, space, structure, and change. Mat hematicians seek out patterns and formulate new conjectures. Mathematicians reso lve the truth or falsity of conjectures by mathematical proofs, which are argume nts sufficient to convince other mathematicians of their validity. The research required to solve mathematical problems can take years or even centuries of sust ained inquiry. However, mathematical proofs are less formal and painstaking than proofs in mathematical logic. Since the pioneering work of Giuseppe Peano (1858C 1932), David Hilbert (1862C1943), and others on axiomatic systems in the late 19t h century, it has become customary to view mathematical research as establishing truth by rigorous deduction from appropriately chosen axioms and definitions. W hen those mathematical structures are good models of real phenomena, then mathem atical reasoning often provides insight or predictions. Through the use of abstraction and logical reasoning, mathematics developed from counting, calculation, measurement, and the systematic study of the shapes and motions of physical objects. Practical mathematics has been a human activity for as far back as written records exist. Rigorous arguments first appeared in Gree k mathematics, most notably in Euclid's Elements. Mathematics developed at a rel atively slow pace until the Renaissance, when mathematical innovations interacti ng with new scientific discoveries led to a rapid increase in the rate of mathem atical discovery that continues to the present day. Galileo Galilei (1564C1642) said, "The universe cannot be read until we have lear ned the language and become familiar with the characters in which it is written. It is written in mathematical language, and the letters are triangles, circles and other geometrical figures, without which means it is humanly impossible to c omprehend a single word. Without these, one is wandering about in a dark labyrin th". Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777C1855) referred to mathematics as "the queen of sc iences". The mathematician Benjamin Peirce (1809C1880) called the discipline, "th e science that draws necessary conclusions". David Hilbert said of it: "We are n ot speaking here of arbitrariness in any sense. Mathematics is not like a game w hose tasks are determined by arbitrarily stipulated rules. Rather, it is a conce ptual system possessing internal necessity that can only be so and by no means o therwise." Albert Einstein (1879C1955) stated that "as far as the laws of mathema

tics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, the y do not refer to reality". Mathematics is used throughout the world as an essential tool in many fields, in cluding natural science, engineering, medicine, and the social sciences. Applied mathematics, the branch of mathematics concerned with application of mathematic al knowledge to other fields, inspires and makes use of new mathematical discove ries and sometimes leads to the development of entirely new mathematical discipl ines, such as statistics and game theory. Mathematicians also engage in pure mat hematics, or mathematics for its own sake, without having any application in min d. There is no clear line separating pure and applied mathematics, and practical applications for what began as pure mathematics are often discovered. More about Mathematics... Selected article | Picture of the month | Did you know... | Topics in mathematic s Categories | WikiProjects | Things you can do | Index | Related portals There are approximately 29,213 mathematics articles in Wikipedia. View new selections below (purge) edit Selected article Monty open door.svg In search of a new car, the player picks door 1. The game host then opens door 3 to reveal a goat and offers to let the player pick door 2 instead of door 1. Image credit: Cepheus The Monty Hall problem is a puzzle involving probability loosely based on the Am erican game show Let's Make a Deal. The name comes from the show's host, Monty H all. A widely known, but problematic (see below) statement of the problem is fro m Craig F. Whitaker of Columbia, Maryland in a letter to Marilyn vos Savant's Se ptember 9, 1990, column in Parade Magazine (as quoted by Bohl, Liberatore, and N ydick). Suppose you're on a game show, and you're given the choice of three ehind one door is a car; behind the others, goats. You pick a door, say nd the host, who knows what's behind the doors, opens another door, say hich has a goat. He then says to you, "Do you want to pick door No. 2?" your advantage to switch your choice? doors: B No. 1, a No. 3, w Is it to

The problem is also called the Monty Hall paradox; it is a veridical paradox in the sense that the solution is counterintuitive, although the problem does not y ield a logical contradiction. View all selected articles Read More... edit Picture of the month Science Museum London 1110529 nevit.jpg Credit: Nevit Dilmen Photograph of a Klein bottle from Science Museum, London. ...Archive Read more... edit Categories C Puzzle.png Algebra | Arithmetic | Analysis | Complex analysis | Applied mathematics | Calcu lus | Category theory | Chaos theory | Combinatorics | Dynamic systems | Fractal s | Game theory | Geometry | Algebraic geometry | Graph theory | Group theory |

Linear algebra | Mathematical logic | Model Theory | Multi-dimensional geometry | Number theory | Numerical analysis | Optimization | Order theory | Probability and statistics | Set theory | Statistics | Topology | Algebraic topology | Trig onometry Mathematics (books) | History of mathematics | Mathematicians | Awards | Educati on | Institutes and societies | Literature | Notation | Theorems | Proofs | Unso lved problems Mathematics ? Mathematics portal ? Mathematics-related lists ? Mathematical examples ? Applied mathematics ? Mathematics and culture ? Elementary mathematics ? Fields of mathematics ? Mathematics literature ? Mathematical concepts ? Mathematicians ? Mathematical notation ? Philosophy of mathematics ? Mathematical problem solving ? Mathematical terminology ? Mathematical tools ? Mathematics stubs More mathematics categories edit Did you know... Did you know... ...that Auction theory was successfully used in 1994 to sell FCC airwave spe ctrum, in a financial application of game theory? ...properties of Pascal's triangle have application in many fields of mathem atics including combinatorics, algebra, calculus and geometry? ...work in artificial intelligence makes use of Swarm intelligence, which ha s foundations in the behavorial examples found in nature of ants, birds, bees, a nd fish among others? ...that statistical properties dictated by Benford's Law are used in auditin g of financial accounts as one means of detecting fraud? ...that Modular arithmetic has application in at least ten different fields of study, including the arts, computer science, and chemistry in addition to mat hematics? ... that according to Kawasaki's theorem, an origami crease pattern with one vertex may be folded flat if and only if the sum of every other angle between c onsecutive creases is 180o? ... that, in the Rule 90 cellular automaton, any finite pattern eventually f ills the whole array of cells with copies of itself? ... that, while the criss-cross algorithm visits all eight corners of the Kl eeCMinty cube when started at a worst corner, it visits only three more corners o n average when started at a random corner? ...that in senary, all prime numbers other than 2 and 3 end in 1 or a 5? Showing 9 items out of 68 edit WikiProjects More did you know

The Mathematics WikiProject is the center for mathematics-related editing on Wik ipedia. Join the discussion on the project's talk page.

WikiProjects Project pages Participants Current activity Manual of style Conventions Essays Advice on using Wikipedia for mathematics self-study Proofs Subprojects PlanetMath Exchange (Talk) Graphics (Talk) Article assessment (Talk) Related projects Computer science | Cryptography | Game theory | Numbers | Physics | Science | St atistics edit Things you can do Nuvola apps korganizer.svg Collaboration of the month: Polynomial identity ring Create a new article: See requested articles list Add a new image: Requested images list Improve articles: Pages needing attention (Category) Expand articles: Mathematics stubs edit Topics in mathematics General Foundations Nuvola apps bookcase.svg

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Mathematicians History of mathematics Philosophy of mathematics Mathematical notation Mathematical beauty Mathematics education Areas of mathematics List of basic mathematics topics Wikipedia Books: Mathematics Set theory icon.svg Foundations of mathematics Mathematical logic Proof theory G?del's incompleteness theorems Model theory Recursion theory

Set theory (portal) Naive set theory Axiomatic set theory Category theory (portal) Topos theory Nuvola apps kwin4.png Number theory (portal) Algebraic number theory Analytic number theory Arithmetic Fundamental theorem of arithmetic Numbers Natural numbers Prime numbers Rational numbers Algebraic numbers Nuvola apps atlantik.png Discrete mathematics (portal) Combinatorics Combinatorial geometry Coding theory Combinatorial design Enumerative combinatorics Combinatorial optimization Graph theory Order theory Lattice theory Algebra Analysis Arithmetic symbols.svg Geometry and topology Applied mathematics

Algebra (portal) Elementary algebra Abstract algebra Group theory Ring theory Field theory Commutative algebra Geometric algebra Linear algebra Matrix theory Multilinear algebra Universal algebra Fundamental theorem of algebra Source Analysis (portal) Calculus Fundamental theorem of calculus Vector calculus

Measure theory Real analysis Complex analysis Differential equations Ordinary differential equations Partial differential equations Integral equations Approximation theory Special functions Potential theory Harmonic analysis Fourier analysis Functional analysis Operator theory Nuvola apps kpovmodeler.svg Geometry (portal) Euclidean geometry Trigonometry Non-Euclidean geometry Affine geometry Projective geometry Convex geometry Discrete geometry Algebraic geometry Differential geometry Riemannian geometry Lie groups Topology (portal) General topology Algebraic topology Geometric topology Differential topology Gcalctool.svg Applied mathematics Mathematical modeling Mathematical physics Dynamical systems Control theory Calculus of variations Optimization Mathematical economics Game theory Mathematical finance Statistics (portal) Probability theory Stochastic processes Numerical analysis Theoretical computer science Computability theory Complexity theory Cryptography (portal) Information theory edit

Index of mathematics articles ARTICLE INDEX: A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z 0-9 MATHEMATICIANS: A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z edit Related portals Portal:Algebra Portal:Analysis Portal:Category theory Portal:Computer science Portal:Cryptography Portal:Discrete mathematics Portal:Geometry Algebra Analysis theory Computer science Cryptography mathematics Geometry Portal:Logic Portal:Mathematics Portal:Number theory Portal:Physics Portal:Science Portal:Set theory Portal:Statistics Portal:Topology Logic Mathematics theory Physics Number Science Category Discrete

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