Imagine stepping inside your favourite painting, walking around the light-filled music room of Vermeer's "The Music Lesson" or exploring the chapel in the "Trinity" painted by Masaccio in the 15th century. Using the mathematics of perspective, researchers are now able to produce three-dimensional reconstructions of the scenes depicted in these works.
How can a 3 hour long film like the Lord of the Rings fit on a single DVD? Hw cn U rd txt msgs? How do MP3s make music files smaller, so they can be downloaded faster off the Internet? All these things rely on the mathematics of data compression.
A new series of More or Less, BBC Radio 4's series devoted to all things numerical, starts on November 12th. Presenter Andrew Dilnot tells Plus about the motivation behind the programme.
To make hard decisions, you need hard facts. Medical statistics can help us to decide what treatment to look for when we are ill, and to estimate our chances of recovery.
