Articles by Phys.org

Gossip often has a negative connotation, but imagine you are part of a group deciding on a job candidate to hire or a local political candidate to back. Candidates who get a good reputation by […]

Malawi introduced free primary education in 1994. This has significantly improved access to schooling. However, the country—which is one of the poorest in the world—still faces a high learning poverty rate of 87%. Learning poverty […]

Will a certain tritium atom decay by a certain time? According to our current science, this question concerning physical phenomena should be answered by sampling from a probability distribution, a process not unlike spinning a […]

French director Justine Triet’s “Anatomy of a Fall,” winner of the 2023 Oscar for best original script, reconstructs a fatal fall in order to dissect the collapse of the romantic relationship between the film’s leading […]

Algorithms have become integral to our lives. From social media apps to Netflix, algorithms learn your preferences and prioritize the content you are shown. Google Maps and artificial intelligence are nothing without algorithms.This post was […]

A small team of political scientists, statisticians and data scientists from Harvard University, New York University, and Yale University, has found that by switching to a new method to better protect privacy, the U.S. Census […]

There’s a strange trend in mathematics education in England. Math is the most popular subject at A-level since overtaking English in 2014. It’s taken by around 85,000 and 90,000 students a year.This post was originally […]

Most people have heard the famous phrase “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” Now, Northwestern University researchers have used statistical physics to confirm the theory that underlies this famous axiom. The study, “Proper […]

What do the flow of cars on a highway and the movement of bacteria towards a food source have in common? In both cases, annoying traffic jams can form. Especially for cars, we might want […]

Imagine a small village where every action someone takes, good or bad, is quietly followed by ever-attentive, nosy neighbors. An individual’s reputation is built through these actions and observations, which determines how others will treat […]