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September 1997
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Space probes, like NASA's recent Pathfinder mission to Mars, have radio transmitters of only a few watts, but have to transmit pictures and scientific data across hundreds of millions of miles without the information being completely swamped by noise. Read about how coding theory helps.


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How do you choose a partner? Is it an irrational choice or is it made rationally, based on a mathematical model which analyses the best potential partner you are likely to meet?


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The previous feature, "Mathematics, marriage and finding somewhere to eat" investigated the problem of finding the best potential partner from a fixed number of potential partners using a technique known as "optimal stopping". Inevitably, mathematicians and mathematical psychologists have constructed other models of the problem...


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An account of how a prisoner of war's diary was recently decoded. Donald Hill wrote his diary in a numerical code, disguised as a set of mathematical tables, while in Hong Kong during and after the Japanese invasion of 1941.


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Fibonacci, famous for the Fibonacci sequence, also introduced the decimal system into Europe.


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Sarah Hudson talks about her first year at the University of Sussex. She is doing a BSc degree in Maths with European Studies, which includes a year in Germany.


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Read about what it is like to work at the Meteorological Office in this interview with Helen Hewson. There's also a contact point for careers information.