Mathematicians can be fascinated by the elegance and beauty of the ideas behind mathematical theories. Mathematical structures are already out there and our goal is to discover them.
In this article, we will discuss a mathematical riddle that "seems impossible even if you know the answer". It is better known as the 100 prisoners problem.
How can one hope to understand the precise structure of a virus if it is able to become unrecognizable within weeks? The mathematics behind this questions didn't let go of my mind for extensive periods of time during my PhD studies in Belgium.
Common sense tells us that objects of comparable size should be equally hard to find. Yet, when searching inside a random network, surprises are awaiting . . .
In a seminar talk in Cambridge this week, Julian Sahasrabudhe announced that he, together with his colleagues Marcelo Campos, Simon Griffiths and Rob Morris, had obtained an exponential improvement to the upper bound for Ramsey's theorem.
