Remember the graph paper you used at school, the kind that’s covered with tiny squares? It’s the perfect illustration of what mathematicians call a “periodic tiling of space”, with shapes covering an ...

Stripes are common in our lives. It’s a pretty basic pattern, and easy to take for granted. As an applied mathematician who studies how patterns form in nature, though, I am wowed by the striped ...

Using a new computer model, scientists simulated the stripes, spots and hexagons on a species of boxfish, imperfections and all. A male ornate boxfish with distinctive, complex patterns of stripes and ...