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Editorial

  • Beaglemania - The Beagle is missing in action, but it is inspiring a new generation of would-be astronauts.
  • Careers with Maths - Plus has been given a grant to produce posters based on our popular careers library.
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Blood filling a needle

Pools of blood

A biologist has developed a blood test for detecting a certain minor abnormality in infants. Obviously if you have blood samples from 100 children, you could find out which children are affected by running 100 separate tests. But mathematicians are never satisfied by the obvious answer. Keith Ball uses information theory to explain how to cut down the number of tests significantly, by pooling samples of blood.

Article

Outer space: Rugby and Relativity

Human beings are famously prone to error, and proof-readers are, after all, only human. But who picks up the errors a proof-reader misses? John D. Barrow challenges readers to estimate the errors that aren't found from the errors that are.
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Games people play

Combinatorial Game Theory is a powerful tool for analysing mathematical games. Lewis Dartnell explains how the technique can be used to analyse games such as Twentyone and Nim, and even some chess endgames.
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Editorial

  • What is maths for? - What do we hope people will know after studying maths at school?
  • New Plus posters! - Find out how you can get hold of your own copy of our brilliant new poster!
  • Specially for students - This issue of Plus brings you the first of an occasional series expecially for use in the classroom.