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Careers with maths
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Rupa Patel reflects to Plus on her work as a financial engineer

A favourite from the archive...
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When we finally meet the Martians, John Conway believes they are going to want to talk mathematics.

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March 2008
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paradox

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Did you know that you can't average averages? Or that Paris is rainier than London ... but it rains more in London than in Paris? Andrew Stickland explores the dangers that face the unwary when using a single number to summarise complex data.

Tags: statistics : probability : Average : correlation : paradox : Simpson's Paradox : mean : median : outlier


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Eugen Jost is a Swiss artist whose work is strongly influenced by mathematics. He sent us this Postcard from Italy, telling us about his work and the important roles that nature and numbers play in it.

Tags: Fibonacci number : trigonometry : sundial : symmetry : paradox : infinity : puzzle : palindrome


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For millennia, puzzles and paradoxes have forced mathematicians to continually rethink their ideas of what proofs actually are. Jon Walthoe explains the tricks involved and how great thinkers like Pythagoras, Newton and Gödel tackled the problems.

Tags: proof : axiom : calculus : Russell's Paradox : rational number : irrational number : paradox : gödel's incompleteness theorem : deduction : induction