What can baby carrots tell us about infinity? Photo by ilovebutter/flickr/CC BY 2.0 Infinity is big. Really big. As mathematician Eugenia Cheng puts it, it’s the “biggest thing there is.” In her new ...
The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. All of modern mathematics is built on the foundation of set theory, the study of how to organize abstract collections of objects. But in ...
Several years ago, I tried to explain infinity to a class of fifth graders. In the story that I told them, I was preparing to eat a piece of cake when a friend walked in on me. Being polite, I gave ...