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Mathematical mysteries: Kepler's conjecture

Sir Walter Raleigh is perhaps best known for laying down his cloak in the mud for Queen Elizabeth I. But, he also started a mathematical quest which to this day remains unsolved.

Article
Line drawing of Helen of Troy

Dynamic programming: an introduction

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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Are the polls right?

The British General Election (May 1997) is an example of how simple mathematical ideas help in understanding information that involves numbers.
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What mathematicians get up to

After 5,000 years, the game of Nine Men's Morris has succumbed to the power of modern computing, plus other recent mathematical discoveries in the world of games.
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Agner Krarup Erlang (1878 - 1929)

The mathematics underlying today's complex telephone networks is still based on his work. Erlang was the first person to study the problem of telephone networks.
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BT's worldwide network management centre

Call routing in telephone networks

Find out how modern telephone networks use mathematics to make it possible for a person to dial a friend in another country just as easily as if they were in the same street, or to read web pages that are on a computer in another continent.

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Editorial

  • Allergic to mathematics?
  • The inner beauty of pure mathematics
  • A journey with mathematics
  • Staff room
Article

Understanding turbulence

Have you ever been in an aeroplane on a smooth flight when suddenly the plane bumps up and down for a short time as it goes through turbulent air? The study of turbulence is used to understand a range of phenomena from the simple squirting of a jet of water to the activity of the sun.