A few minutes into a 2018 talk at the University of Michigan, Ian Tobasco picked up a large piece of paper and crumpled it into a seemingly disordered ball of chaos. He held it up for the audience to ...

Early in the morning during festivals, many Indian homes wake up to patterns forming quietly at the doorstep. White powder falls in steady lines. Dots appear first, arranged carefully. Then curved ...

Tessellations aren’t just eye-catching patterns—they can be used to crack complex mathematical problems. By repeatedly reflecting shapes to tile a surface, researchers uncovered a method that links ...

A mathematician has developed a new way to uncover simple patterns that might underlie apparently complex systems, such as clouds, cracks in materials or the movement of the stockmarket. The method, ...

A study of medieval Islamic art has shown some of its geometric patterns use principles established centuries later by modern mathematicians. Researchers in the US have found 15th Century examples ...