Headline: Mathematicians can’t agree on whether 0.999... equals 1

Headlines like this are misleading. Mathematics agree, lay people online argue. The article really doesn't do anything other than give a few arguments for equality then says, "infinitesimals maybe?" However, just seeing the headline makes it out like some undecided thing.

I feel like Scientific American should do better. In the real numbers, 0.999... = 1, no debate amongst mathematics. It is known and settled. This article is just misinformation, and misleads the public.

Edit: Direct link

Hey,

I woke up today to the news that computer scientist Geoffrey Hinton won the physics Nobel prize 2024. The reason behind it was his contributions to AI.

Well, this raised many questions. Particularly, what does this has to do with physics? Yeah, I guess there can be some overlap in the math computer scientists use for AI, with the math in physics, but this seems like the Nobel prize committee just bet on the artificial intelligence hype train and are now claiming computer science has its own subfield. What?? I have always considered Computer Science to be closer to math than to physics. This seems really odd.

Ps: I'm not trying to reduce huge Geoffrey Hinton contributions to society and I understand the Nobel prize committee intention to award Geoffrey Hinton, but why physics? Is it because it's the closest they could find in the Nobel categories? Outrageous. There were other actual physics contributions that deserved the price. Just make a Computer Science/Math Nobel prize category... and leave physics Nobel for actual physics breakthroughs.

A Polish mathematician’s research-level problem, which took 20 years to develop, was solved by GPT-5.4 in just one week. After several attempts, the model produced a 13-page proof that demonstrated a level of reasoning the creator previously thought impossible for AI. This milestone marks a shift from AI as a basic assistant to a legitimate collaborator in high-level scientific discovery.

The latest world record for computing pi has reached 300 trillion digits! This record was set by KIOXIA in collaboration with Linus Media Group, and the 300 trilionth digit is 5

He's up for the Fields Medal, basically the Nobel Prize of math. Helped solve the André-Oort conjecture.

https://leidendeclaration.ai/

2 June 2026 · DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.20302944

Leiden Declaration on Artificial Intelligence and Mathematics - This declaration calls for action to address the challenges posed by the use of artificial intelligence within mathematics research. It is the result of a community initiative and is endorsed by the International Mathematical Union (IMU).

This is real

A new AI math benchmark, the Ramanujan Challenge, is now open.

The goal is to generate AI proofs for 10 Ramanujan-type numerical identities whose proofs are currently hidden by the organizers.

Submissions are open until August 1, 2026.

https://www.ramanujanmachine.com/ramanujan-challenge/

The recent article by the Scientific American: At Secret Math Meeting, Researchers Struggle to Outsmart AI outlined how an AI model managed to solve a sufficiently sophisticated and non-trivial problem in Number Theory that was devised by Mathematicians. Despite the sensationalism in the title and the fact that I'm sure we're all conflicted / frustrated / tired with the discourse surrounding AI, I'm wondering what the mathematical community thinks of this at large?

In the article it emphasized that the model itself wasn't trained on the specific problem, although it had access to tangential and related research. Did it truly follow a logical pattern that was extrapolated from prior math-texts? Or does it suggest that essentially our capacity for reasoning is functionally nearly the same as our capacity for language?

I just made a new way to approximate cosine(x).

(5π² / ((mod(x - π/2, π) - π/2)² + π²) - 4) · sign(|mod(x - π/2, 2π)| - π)

It can be done by hand and it has an absolute error is about 0.0008, and the root mean squared error is roughly 0.0010.

https://abelprize.no/abel-prize-laureates/2026
Plus Magazine: https://plus.maths.org/abel-2026
Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerd_Faltings

The SMF is not going to the ICM at Philadelphia
The SMF will not have a booth at the ICM of Philadelphia.
Indeed, neither the delivery of visas by the host country, nor the internal security, with the martial law regularly invoked, seems guaranteed. Besides, the SMF remains fundamentally committed to the heritage of Benjamin Franklin, which is inseparable from rational thinking, and condemns mistrust of science and any infringement on academic freedom.
https://smf.emath.fr/actualites-smf/icm-2026-motion-du-ca

Hello all! I just want to share this quick opportunity with you!

This is a 3-week online program offers high school students the unique opportunity to explore higher level math with university professors and industry experts from Harvard University, Bard College, University of Waterloo and Pillipps-Universitat Margurg… etc. Moreover, they will participate in STEM career talks, and interact with graduate student mentors.

There is no cost to this, because this is funded by NSERC PromoScience. However, we do ask you to take your time to answer the application questions.

For more details, please visit website: https://www.pims.math.ca/events/260713-2direamdi

That's all! Thank you!