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Once I heard about a prophet that used math to foresaw with great accuracy many events of the humanity. Today I oddly realized the time between falling drops after washing cups fit the inverse square law.

What are some unexpected things accurately predicted by math?

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closed as too broad by Alexander Gruber Jun 16 '14 at 5:16


I would have thought that if the drops come after closing a tap, then there is a finite amount of liquid and so a finite number of drops. –  Henry Apr 2 '12 at 7:59
I'd say that's have to do more with natural sciences, rather than math. So you may also try asking the question at physics.stackexchange.com Though the connection of physics and math is a distinct and a rich theme for a discussion. –  Yrogirg Apr 2 '12 at 8:34
Was the prophet "Hari Sheldon" born 10th month of the 11,988th year of the Galactic Era? –  Chris K. Caldwell Apr 2 '12 at 13:41
Fun reading: dartmouth.edu/~matc/MathDrama/reading/Wigner.html, "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences" by Eugene Wigner. –  Neal Jun 27 '12 at 13:52
Be sure to balance the unreasonable effectiveness with the unreasonable ineffectiveness of math in complex systems, eg in economics: cje.oxfordjournals.org/content/29/6/849.abstract, in biomedicine: deirdremccloskey.com/docs/fisherian.pdf –  alancalvitti Dec 11 '12 at 3:26

5 Answers 5

The angle of the wake of a body moving steadily in deep water (e.g. a ship or a duck) is always $2\arcsin(1/3) \approx 38.9^\circ$.

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Existence of Black Holes, Pulsars, parallel universes, worm holes.

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It's not known that parallel universes or worm holes exist, so I don't think we should classify those as "accurately predicted by math" ... –  Neal Jun 27 '12 at 13:49

Here is an interesting article about Mathematical Fortune-Telling

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Look at Good–Turing rule, the two posts in Azimuth blog:

The puzzle itself:

Suppose you go into the jungles of Ecuador and start collecting butterflies. You count the number of butterflies of each different species that you find. You get a list of numbers, something like this:

14, 10, 8, 6, 2, 1, 1, 1

Puzzle: What is the chance that the next butterfly you find will belong to a new species?

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A curious application from Fred Hoyle : Use the the prevalence of life forms on earth to deduce a new resonance in the carbon-12 nucleus.

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