What mathematicians call ‘disordered collections’ can help engineers explore real-world worst-case scenarios. The simple card game Set illustrates how to predict internet and electrical grid failures.

Rapidly changing temperatures and sensory environments are challenging the nervous systems of many species. Animals will be forced to evolve to survive.

Understanding how the intricate spots and stripes, or Turing patterns, of many animals form can help scientists mimic those processes in the lab.

Nature begins forming patterns at the molecular level – and sometimes they grow to enormous sizes.

The tics associated with Tourette syndrome have a fractal pattern, report researchers. And, a characteristic of that pattern can predict how severe the disease will get.

You have a finely honed sense of privacy in the physical world. But the sights and sounds you encounter online don’t help you detect risks and can even lull you into a false sense of security.

A new algorithm lets quilters skip figuring out the notoriously complicated and frustrating order of steps in advanced patterns and focus on creativity.

By age three, children show a preference for the fractal patterns common in nature, despite growing up in a world of Euclidean geometry.

We wanted to find out which biological phenomena are crucial for pattern formation and which are just incidental. These sorts of questions can be answered with mathematical modelling.