We rely on maps to make sense of the world around us. But for most maps, points of extreme irregularity pop up. Those points are called singularities. A new study reports the discovery of a set of equations capable of untangling the distortions in maps caused by singularities.

View the world through UC Davis mathematician Roger Casals Gutiérrez’s eyes and you’ll realize that mathematics is everywhere. In this article, Casals Gutiérrez shows how we encounter objects of his research interests, like singularities, in daily life.