Tag: math

‘Bunker Mode’: OpenAI’s Jaw-Dropping Math Blitz Draws Boycott, Warning Over Crypto Wallets

OpenAI just unleashed hundreds of AI-generated mathematical papers in a single release, which include breakthroughs on problems that have frustrated researchers for generations. The pace of discovery here has started to freak out mathematicians – who are now calling for a boycott – while top minds in crypto are raising a chilling question: could AI eventually undermine the mathematics protecting digital wallets before quantum computing?

On October 6, the company published 722 manuscripts covering 372 groups of related findings, all generated by an internal AI model that has not been released to the public. The papers appeared in a public GitHub repository. OpenAI says the work emerged from testing the model on roughly 4,000 research problems, with each result in the final collection using, on average, computing power equivalent to about three hours of ChatGPT Pro’s thinking mode. The collection includes claims about prime numbers, geometry and the mathematics underlying computing, touching problems that have resisted some of the world’s best minds for decades.

Perhaps the most startling claim concerns the Riemann hypothesis, a mathematical puzzle dating to 1859 that deals with the hidden patterns governing prime numbers – the building blocks from which every whole number greater than one can be made.

For math nerds: 

Mathematicians study those patterns through a special mathematical function, looking in particular at the points where it equals zero. The full Riemann hypothesis predicts that all the important zeros fall along one precise line. OpenAI’s model has not proved that. Instead, it claims to have ruled out zeros across an enormous, permanently defined region where previous proofs offered a much narrower guarantee. If the claim holds up, it would be a major advance toward understanding one of mathematics’ most famous unsolved problems.

For specialists, the dividing line in the new claim is a value of 7/8, while the full hypothesis would require 1/2. The related equations are known as the Riemann zeta function and Dirichlet L-functions. For everyone else, the point is simpler: the AI claims to have established a far stronger limit on where these crucial mathematical points can appear, without claiming to have settled the entire puzzle.

Other OpenAI papers claim progress on the Hodge conjecture – which concerns the structure of complex geometric shapes – though only for a class of objects called CM abelian varieties.

Math nerds rejoice? Or panic?

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California high school grads score 4.0 GPAs but can’t do basic math, professors say

California high school students are scoring more straight A’s than ever – but it’s not necessarily because they’re getting smarter, according to data and education experts. 

The number of college applicants reporting flawless GPAs of 4.0 or higher has doubled over the past decade even as state testing shows a post-pandemic plunge in reading and math comprehension — revealing a grade-inflation crisis that’s sending students who can’t even do fractions into top universities.

Over the past decade, the number of students applying to the University of California system with straight A’s skyrocketed from 52,989 in 2015 to 103,138 for the class of 2025, with a notable jump during the COVID-19 pandemic between 2020 and 2022, according to UC data reviewed by The Post.

It’s part of a dangerous slide in grading standards as teachers are backhandedly encouraged to hand out inflated marks, according to critics like Glenn Sacks, who teaches social studies in the Los Angeles Unified School District.

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US Students Still Behind Much Of The World In Math And Reading: Global Assessment

Results from a recent global assessment indicate that reading scores for American high school students have dropped over the past three years, while math and science performance still falls behind their peers in several other developed countries.

The Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), which tests 15-year-olds in math, science, and reading proficiency as metrics for college and career readiness, conducted its last tests in 2025.

The initial findings, released on Sept. 8, indicate that children from Singapore, Japan, South Korea, Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom continue to outperform American public-school children in those three subjects.

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RFK Jr. Torches CNN’s Erin Burnett After Attempting to Discredit Affordable Meals Featured on MAHA’s New Food Show: ‘TDS Has So Debilitated’ Her That She Abandoned Common Sense and Basic Arithmetic

The far-left hacks at CNN are so terrified of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement that they have completely abandoned basic math just to attack Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. blasted CNN host Erin Burnett after her program aired a ridiculous “investigation” attempting to discredit the affordable meals featured on Kennedy’s new cooking series, The Real Food Show.

Kennedy’s program, inspired by President Trump’s Make America Healthy Again agenda, features chefs preparing nutritious, whole-food meals for approximately $5 or less per serving.

But CNN decided to “fact-check” Kennedy by purchasing full containers of nearly every ingredient—even when the recipe required only a spoonful—and then charging the entire package price to one meal.

During Wednesday’s episode of Erin Burnett OutFront, CNN correspondent Tom Foreman recreated the show’s crispy salmon cakes with apple, white bean, and greens salad.

The official HHS recipe serves four people for approximately $5 per serving using frozen wild salmon—and even less when made with canned salmon.

CNN, however, claimed it cost $70.54 to purchase all the ingredients.

Foreman complained that HHS priced one egg rather than an entire carton, eight cents’ worth of red onion rather than the whole onion, and 40 cents’ worth of avocado mayonnaise rather than the full $11 container.

“Grocery stores don’t sell things that way,” Foreman declared.

Of course, the remaining eggs, onion, mayonnaise, olive oil, mustard, vinegar, herbs, and other pantry staples do not disappear after preparing the meal. They remain available for the next recipe.

CNN also disputed HHS’s salmon price, saying the network paid more than $24 for what it described as the closest comparable frozen wild-caught sockeye salmon, compared with the show’s listed price of $8.99.

Although the CNN segment acknowledged that HHS used “standard recipe costing methodology,” the network nevertheless presented its full grocery-store checkout total as the “real” cost of Kennedy’s meal.

Burnett concluded the segment without addressing the obvious distinction between the upfront cost of stocking a kitchen and the actual amount of food consumed in a single recipe.

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NY’s ‘green elephant’ climate projects are collapsing under the weight of . . . math

Nearly two dozen New York clean energy projects are likely to get scrapped because the financial math doesn’t add up — though the state powers that be don’t want to admit that it never did.

Officially, the New York State Energy Research Development Authority, aka NYSERDA, is simply refusing to renegotiate state contracts to build various wind and solar plants, likely leading its counterparties to pull out.

These companies want more cash because the projects’ costs have soared since the deals were inked — mainly because NYSERDA winked at unlikely early estimates with an expectation that it would OK more realistic numbers later on.

In at least one earlier round, it simply rebid the contracts to reflect true costs, but that game is up now that those costs are becoming undeniable, and consumers are already screaming at the electric rate hikes needed to cover the bills.

It’s all part of the con that is New York’s 2019 Climate Act, a scam that set insane goals for decarbonizing the state’s electricity grid and outlined imaginary steps to paint the transition as practical. 

Green ideologues always figure deception is the best way to get governments started on such “reforms,” hoping they can then hector the politicians into keeping the scam going by concealing how exorbitant the costs really are.

Then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo jumped on board as he eyed a presidential run; his successor, Kathy Hochul, declined to call out the lunacy until now, when she’s running for re-election as the economic pain starts to hit.

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Billionaires Backing Woke Math Doesn’t Add Up Amid DEI Rollback

Jim Simons’ mathematical skills helped transform him from a prize-winning academic at Harvard and MIT into a legendary financier whose algorithmic models made Renaissance Technologies one of the most successful hedge funds in history. After his death last year, one of his consequential bequests went to his daughter, Liz, who oversees the Heising-Simons Foundation and its nearly billion-dollar endowment.

What Liz Simons has chosen to do with that inheritance might have surprised her father. Jim Simons devoted much of his charitable giving to basic research in mathematics and science, but his daughter’s foundation is moving in a very different direction. The Heising-Simons Foundation and similar organizations are supercharging a movement to remake K-12 mathematics education according to social justice principles.

The revamp the advocates seek is profound. They reject well-established practices of math instruction while infusing lessons with racial and gender themes. The goal is to motivate disadvantaged students while dispensing with the traditional features of math, like numerical computation, that they struggle with on standardized tests – considered an oppressive feature of white supremacist culture.

In many quarters, including corporations and universities, diversity, equity, and inclusion programs are in retreat due to pressure from the Trump administration and the courts. Not so in public education, with curricula that are locally controlled and largely insulated from the dictates of Washington. That allows progressive foundations and like-minded charitable trusts to continue to pour millions of dollars into reshaping math education for black and Latino kids, including a $800,000 grant this year from the Heising-Simons Foundation, even though there exists no credible research showing that the social justice approach improves their performance.

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“American Students Are Falling Behind”: Poor Math Scores Are Now A National Security Threat

The most recent results of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) highlight a concerning trend for U.S. students in the field of math.

In comparison to their counterparts in other industrialized nations, American students are falling behind. The rather sobering results revealed a 13-point decline for U.S. students when compared to the 2018 exam.

In stark contrast, 28 countries and economies managed to either maintain or improve their 2018 math scores, with countries such as Switzerland and Japan leading the way—and leaving the United States in the dust. These considerably more successful nations share a number of common characteristics, including, most notably of all, shorter school closures during the pandemic, as noted in the report.

Obviously concerned by the findings, the Defense Department has called for a new initiative to provide support for education in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). As The Hechinger Report reported, China, the United States’ biggest rival, has eight times the number of college graduates in these disciplines compared to the United States, while Russia, another major foe, has four times the number of engineers. This alarming disparity, noted the Hechinger Report piece, has prompted concerns beyond the realm of education. The United States’ mathematical failings pose a direct threat to its technological supremacy.

Other commentators have gone a step further. Falling math scores, they suggest, should be viewed as a national security threat. They’re right.

Mathematics plays a critical role in various fields such as the physical sciences, technology, business, financial services, and infrastructure. For instance, geometry, algebra, and trigonometry are fundamental parts of architectural design. Moreover, math plays a significant role in medicine, AI, and quantum computing. Math serves as the foundation for virtually all scientific and industrial research and development. Essentially, mathematics can be seen as the underlying operating system that makes the world go round.

Which begs the trillion-dollar question: What can be done?

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U.S. students’ math scores plunge in global education assessment

U.S. students lag behind their peers in many industrialized countries when it comes to math, according to the results of a global exam released Tuesday.

Why it matters: U.S. students saw a 13-point drop in their 2022 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) math results when compared to the 2018 exam.

  • The 2022 math score was not only lower than it was in 2012 but it was “among the lowest ever measured by PISA in mathematics” for the U.S., per the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) country note.

Zoom in: While the U.S. scored below the OECD average in math, it managed to score above the OECD average in reading and science.

  • The 2022 results found that U.S. students scored one point below their 2018 reading score and three points below their 2018 science score. However, their performances in those areas were higher than in 2012.

The 2018 PISA assessment found that U.S. students straggled behind their peers in East Asia and Europe, per the Washington Post.

What they’re saying: In a statement Tuesday responding to the latest results, Education Sec. Miguel Cardona praised the U.S. for moving up in the world rankings but acknowledged “there’s much work to be done.”

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Pittsburgh public schools approve measure to instruct teachers on ‘White supremacy’ in math classes

The Pittsburgh Public Schools Board has voted to hire a consulting group that educates teachers on how to replace “White supremacy culture practices” in math instruction with methods that center on the “wellness of students of color.”

On October 25, the board approved a measure to give Quetzal Education Consulting $50,000 to dismantle racism in math classes.

As reported by The Center Square, the consulting group states that its workshops teach “antiracist math” and will help equip teachers with tools to “identify, disrupt and replace” practices that perpetuate White supremacy.

Ebony Pugh, the Director of Public Relations and Media Content for Pittsburgh Public Schools, confirmed to Fox News Digital that the Board of Directors of the School District of Pittsburgh authorized its offices to enter a contract with Quetzal.

The move will provide the school with “additional foundational knowledge of antiracist math pedagogy and tangible learning experiences that can be implemented with students.”

Quetzal will provide support through introductory workshops for math teachers and a leadership series for administrators.

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California State Guidelines Discourage Schools From Offering Advanced Middle School Math

A small but growing number of American schools are reducing or delaying access to advanced courses. Most often, these changes have been enacted in the name of reducing achievement gaps between demographic groups. However, rather than helping marginalized students, these policies deny educational opportunities for gifted students of all backgrounds.

“Detracking” is an increasingly popular proposal among educators that attempts to reduce the degree to which students are separated by academic ability. It typically takes the form of removing advanced course offerings or delaying the introduction of these offerings. Supporters claim that marginalized students are often wrongly placed—or place themselves—in less advanced courses and that these students often stay on a less advanced curricular path.

In San Francisco, public schools have eliminated accelerated math courses in middle and high school since 2014, and several Seattle schools had rolled out detracking efforts by 2016. Earlier this year, a Detroit-area school district eliminated middle school honors math classes, while schools in Cambridge, Massachusetts, began phasing out advanced middle school math in 2017—though the district announced it would reverse course in August. Outrage erupted in February when one Los Angeles–area school eliminated honors English courses for ninth- and 10th-grade students.

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