Hacker News with Generative AI: Math

Math (2022) (susanrigetti.com)
Back in 2016, I typed up a little guide to studying physics called “So You Want to Learn Physics.” It ended up being pretty popular, so I started working on other guides, including a guide to studying philosophy (“So You Want to Study Philosophy”), which I published in 2021, and this long-awaited guide to studying mathematics, which I am sharing with you today.
Math, Learning Resources, Education
4 points by Tomte 6 days ago | 0 comments
Animations Using Math Editor (luiscristovao.github.io)
Animations, Math, Web Development, JavaScript
17 points by ltc_123 6 days ago | 2 comments
What Can You Do with a Slide Rule? (math.utah.edu)
There was a time when electronic calculators did not yet exist. This did not stop us from doing complicated things, like going to the moon, figuring out the double helix, or designing the Boeing 747. In those days, when we needed to compute things, we used slide rules which are marvelous and beautiful instruments!
Math, History, Technology
23 points by Tomte 7 days ago | 9 comments
A simple 16x16 dot animation from simple math rules (tixy.land)
tixy - creative code golfing // click the dots for more info // use 32 characters or less (t,i,x,y) =>
Animation, Code Golfing, Math, Programming
539 points by andrewrn 14 days ago | 99 comments
Math Machine – A notebook will show your kid how far they have travelled (kidswholovemath.substack.com)
At some point, math needs to be written down to solve it
Education, Math, Children, Learning
84 points by sebg 17 days ago | 15 comments
Where do scientists think this is all going? (quantamagazine.org)
In the course of reporting this series on the impact of artificial intelligence on science and math, Quanta writers interviewed close to 100 experts — computer scientists, biologists, physicists, mathematicians and many others.
Artificial Intelligence, Science, Math, Research
39 points by rolph 20 days ago | 57 comments
Harvard Admission Exam 1869 – Algebra (corca.app)
Education, History, Math
8 points by OxfordCommand 28 days ago | 0 comments
Don't force your kids to do math (avocados.ovh)
Well… you probably shouldn’t.
Parenting, Education, Math
249 points by happycats 34 days ago | 417 comments
Show HN: val – An arbitrary precision calculator language (github.com/terror)
val (eval) is a simple arbitrary precision calculator language built on top of chumsky and ariadne.
Programming, Rust, Tools, Math, Calculators
34 points by crap 36 days ago | 19 comments
Attention Spans for Math and Stories (2019) (jeremykun.com)
There was a MathOverflow thread about mathematically interesting games for 5–6 year olds. A lot of the discussion revolved around how young age 5 really is, and how we should temper expectations because we don’t really remember what it’s like to be 5.
Math, Education, Childhood, Cognitive Development, Games
91 points by ibobev 37 days ago | 15 comments
Cross-Entropy and KL Divergence (thegreenplace.net)
Cross-entropy is widely used in modern ML to compute the loss for classification tasks. This post is a brief overview of the math behind it and a related concept called Kullback-Leibler (KL) divergence.
Machine Learning, Math, Statistics
72 points by mfrw 41 days ago | 11 comments
Stop using e for compound interest (danielh.cc)
Finance, Investing, Math
23 points by max__dev 42 days ago | 27 comments
Color Is a Mathematical Nightmare (theverge.com)
Understand how to paint by number without your brain exploding.
Color Theory, Math, Design, Brain
8 points by amichail 47 days ago | 2 comments
Gemini 2.5 gets 24.4% on MathArena USAMO beating previous top score of 4.7% (matharena.ai)
MathArena is a platform for evaluation of LLMs on the latest math competitions and olympiads.
Artificial Intelligence, Math, Competitions
54 points by alphabetting 51 days ago | 10 comments
Proof or Bluff? Evaluating LLMs on 2025 USA Math Olympiad (arxiv.org)
Recent math benchmarks for large language models (LLMs) such as MathArena indicate that state-of-the-art reasoning models achieve impressive performance on mathematical competitions like AIME, with the leading model, o3-mini, achieving scores comparable to top human competitors.
Math, Artificial Intelligence, Science
13 points by mfiguiere 53 days ago | 2 comments
Limits of Smart: Molecules and Chaos (dynomight.substack.com)
Take me. Now take someone with the combined talents of Von Neumann, Archimedes, Ramanujan, and Mozart. Now take someone smarter again by the same margin and repeat that a few times.
Intelligence, Science, Philosophy, Math, Music
18 points by crescit_eundo 57 days ago | 6 comments
Mathup: Easy MathML authoring tool with a quick to write syntax (mathup.xyz)
Easy MathML authoring tool with a quick to write syntax.
Math, Tools, Software, Programming
126 points by runarberg 63 days ago | 37 comments
Napkin Math Tool (taylor.town)
Math, Tools, Productivity
134 points by surprisetalk 67 days ago | 33 comments
Statistical Formulas for Programmers (2013) (evanmiller.org)
Being able to apply statistics is like having a secret superpower.
Programming, Statistics, Math
240 points by Tomte 71 days ago | 39 comments
A new Sudoku layout with 81 uniquely shaped cells (danielchasehooper.com)
Something productive finally came from my daily Sudoku habit: I invented a new type of puzzle that I call “Cracked Sudoku”. It’s named after cracked dirt:
Puzzles, Sudoku, Games, Creative Projects, Math
188 points by dmit 72 days ago | 75 comments
Math Academy pulled me out of the Valley of Despair (bearblog.dev)
When it comes to learning a new skill such as how to drive a car, playing a sport, or an academic discipline, there is a unique relationship between a person’s confidence and their level of competence at different points of the journey.
Learning, Education, Personal Development, Math
230 points by gmays 81 days ago | 156 comments
MathB.in Is Shutting Down (susam.net)
Thirteen years ago, on a quiet Saturday night, I sat down and began developing MathB.in.
Math, Web Development, Community, Shutdowns, Nostalgia
66 points by susam 89 days ago | 59 comments
Making any integer with four 2s (thegreenplace.net)
There's a cute math puzzle that can be interesting to folks on very different levels:
Math, Puzzles, Integers
238 points by ibobev 89 days ago | 1 comments
A simple geometry question that fools almost everyone (theguardian.com)
A triangle and a rectangle walked into a pub
Math, Puzzles, Geometry
16 points by mywacaday 94 days ago | 14 comments
Ask HN: Books or games to teach kids math (ycombinator.com)
Anything that can teach a 3 years old kid math, assuming he knows how to count to 10. But also interested in resources that that would take him beyond that and get him to fall in love with math as he grows up.
Education, Children, Math, Games, Books
11 points by aalhour 96 days ago | 8 comments
Just give the man the fish (i.e. just answer the question) (plover.com)
Last week I complained about a Math SE pathology in which OP asks a simple question, and instead of an answer gets an attempt at a socratic dialog. I ended by saying:
Math, Stack Exchange, Online Communities
27 points by camtarn 102 days ago | 15 comments
Explorable Flexagons: Learn to create and flex flexagons (2020) (loki3.com)
Learn to create and flex flexagons
Math, Art, Puzzles, Papercrafts
47 points by PaulHoule 106 days ago | 10 comments
I compared my daughter against SOTA models on math puzzles (michalprzadka.com)
I created an AI math reasoning benchmark using puzzles from this year’s GMIL competition — a long-running international mathematical challenge that I participated in myself back in 1998. The results are quite interesting: some of the most advanced AI models performed comparably to my 11-year-old daughter, while others struggled significantly. This experiment gives some amusing insights into current AI capabilities in mathematical reasoning, especially when compared to human performance at the middle school level.
Artificial Intelligence, Math, Education, Benchmarking, Human-AI Comparison
15 points by przadka 110 days ago | 3 comments
Orbit Spirograph (2019) (redblobgames.com)
Inspired by John Carlos Baez’s post about the Pentagram of Venus[1]. This is the position of Venus relative to the Earth. I got distracted by fun spirograph style images.
Visualizations, Math, Astronomy
75 points by hwayne 120 days ago | 7 comments
Why is zero plural? (2024) (stackexchange.com)
For example, if we choose two 2s, zero 3s, and one 5, we get the divisor
Grammar, Linguistics, English Language, Math
125 points by not_a_boat 122 days ago | 200 comments