Mathematics

Recognizing the critical need to boost math and science test scores, the Los Angeles Unified School District has taken several steps -- including offering bonuses -- to attract and keep teachers in those fields at the district's neediest schools. The move, which took effect this month, comes at a time when the consequences of students falling behind their peers in an increasingly globalized economy are being widely acknowledged. With about 6.

Terence Tao, a UCLA professor who was a child prodigy in calculus and earned a doctorate when he was only 20, on Tuesday was awarded one of four Fields Medals -- an international prize considered the Nobel for mathematics. The Australian-born Tao, 31, was in Madrid to receive the honor, given out every four years at the International Congress of Mathematicians to candidates no older than 40.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation today will announce a $1.3-million grant to Los Angeles schools to improve the teaching of algebra and other college-prep courses. The investment is modest compared to other Gates grants and even other school district initiatives, but marks a growing partnership between the nation's second-largest school system and perhaps the world's largest private philanthropic fund. The one-year grant will pay for teacher training and curriculum design.

A UCLA mathematician sometimes called the "Mozart of Math," a Stanford University aviation engineer using abstract mathematical principles to help prevent airborne collisions, a San Francisco entrepreneur developing affordable drugs for neglected diseases in Third World countries and a Palo Alto engineer helping the blind read are among the 25 winners of this year's MacArthur Foundation "genius" grants. Each winner will receive $500,000 over five years to use as they see fit.

A mental health counselor recited pi to 100,000 decimal places from memory, setting what he claims to be a new world record. In Kisarazu, Japan, Akira Haraguchi, 60, needed more than 16 hours to recite the number to 100,000 decimal places. Pi is a physical constant defined as the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter. It is usually written out to a maximum of three decimal places, as 3.141. Theoretically, there is no limit to the number of decimal places to which it can be written.

THERE may be a new weapon for helping guard the nation's airplanes against terrorism -- and this one doesn't come loaded with bullets or employ Space Age technology. It is mathematics. Or specifically, the mathematics involved in the field of operations research. Operations research is a little-known but valuable tool for such things as scheduling airline flight crews, planning National Football League seasons and even designing waiting lines at Walt Disney World.

After a century of study, scientists have unlocked the secrets of a mysterious 2,100-year-old device known as the Antikythera mechanism, showing it to be a complex and uncannily accurate astronomical computer. The bronze-and-iron mechanism, recovered in more than 80 highly corroded fragments from a sunken Roman ship in 1901, could predict the positions of the sun and planets, show the location of the moon and even forecast eclipses.

In "Congratulations! You're About to Fail!" (Opinion, Jan. 2), Richard Lee Colvin incorrectly gives the impression that California State University students who take remedial education classes are more likely to fail or drop out. The CSU evaluates the progress of first-year freshmen needing remediation and who take remedial English and mathematics. Last year we found that of the regularly admitted, first-time freshmen enrolled in fall 2002 who needed remediation, 82% had gained full proficiency before the second year.

Re "U.S. Warms to a Cohering Europe," Feb. 20: After painfully sitting through President Bush's speech in Brussels, I believe I have reached an insight about the rhetoric of this president and, by extension, the rhetoric of the conservative movement in general. It simply amounts to the realization that there is a complete disconnect between what is said and what is felt or what is done. To me this is reminiscent of a comment of Bertrand Russell on the meaning of formalist mathematics.

Seventeen-year-old Nancy Gonzalez tensely leaned forward as a contest judge sliced open her taped cardboard box. "Oh, I can't look," she said, moments before the judge flipped her a thumbs up, holding up four bubble-wrapped eggs that had survived a six-story plunge. "They survived! They survived!" she and her Santa Ana High School classmates cheered.