Article

How maths can make you rich and famous

One million dollars is waiting to be won by anyone who can solve one of the grand mathematical challenges of the 21st century. But be warned...these problems are hard. In the first of two articles, Chris Budd explains how to hit the bigtime.
Article

Howzat!

Numbers are bandied around all the time in sports coverage - and cricket is particularly rich in statistics and rankings. It has probably not escaped your attention that the World Cup of cricket has just finished in South Africa (Australia won - again) and so to mark the occasion, Rob Eastaway tells Plus what it takes to be the best.
Article

Through the looking-glass

Some molecules - thalidomide, for example - come in both left and right handed versions, while others are indistinguishable from their reflections. Plus finds out about the role of mathematical symmetry in chemistry.
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Editorial

  • Stats in court
  • Letter from a mathematician
News story

CAPTCHA if they can

A test invented by the mathematician Alan Turing in 1950 is helping to stop spammers.
Article
3D window

Getting into the picture

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.

Article

Dashing along

Currently, disabled computer users have a hard time inputting text, using laborious word-completion. Plus find out how this is changing, thanks to Dasher, a new open-source text-entry system based on arithmetic coding.
Article
Green numbers in a white clamp

Text, Bytes and Videotape

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.

Article

Newton and the kissing problem

In 1694, a famous discussion between two of the leading scientists of the day - Isaac Newton and David Gregory - took place on the campus of Cambridge University. The discussion concerned the kissing problem, but it was to be another 260 years before the problem was finally solved.
Article

Editorial

  • Information overload - how mathematicians are helping us all to make sense of the vast amount of information now available to us
  • Sum problems - can you be good at mathematics without being good at arithmetic?
  • Readers' corner - Meet Mandy, the cuddly Mandelbrot set!