Anything but square: from magic squares to SudokuGet on a commuter train these days and you can virtually see people's brains crunching away at filling the numbers from 1 to 9 into a square grid. As the Sudoku craze shows no sign of slowing, Hardeep Aiden investigates its relatives and predecessors.
Symmetry rulesEveryone knows what symmetry is, and the ability to spot it seems to be hard-wired into our brains. Mario Livio explains how not only shapes, but also laws of nature can be symmetrical, and how this aids our understanding of the universe.
Einstein as iconOne hundred years ago, in 1905, Albert Einstein changed physics forever with his special theory of relativity. Since then his name — and hair do — have become synonymous with genius. John D Barrow looks at Einstein as a media star.
Crime fighting mathsMaths is not the first thing that springs to mind when you think about fighting crime. But a closer look reveals that it is behind many of the techniques that modern detectives rely on. Chris Budd investigates.
I'm not paying that!It's not that long ago that all you needed to run an airline was a few planes and some competent pilots. But now, with more of us zipping around the globe every year and the advent of no frills airlines, keeping an airline competitive has become a complicated business. Christine Currie explains how your airfare is calculated.
ART+MATH=XCarla Farsi is both an artist and a mathematician, who declared 2005 her Special Year for art and maths. Find out what she got up to, and what it's like being a part of both worlds.
Where is the next generation? — more bad news for maths education.
Omega and why maths has no TOEsKurt Gödel, who would have celebrated his 100th birthday next year, showed in 1931 that the power of maths to explain the world is limited: his famous incompleteness theorem proves mathematically that maths cannot prove everything. Gregory Chaitin explains why he thinks that Gödel's incompleteness theorem is only the tip of the iceberg, and why mathematics is far too complex ever to be
described by a single theory.
A bright ideaWhat do computers and light switches have in common? Yutaka Nishiyama illuminates the connection between light bulbs, logic and binary arithmetic.
