Articles

  • article

    Natural frequencies and music

    In the first of two articles, David Henwood discusses the vibrations that can be harnessed by musical instrument makers.
  • article

    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...
  • article

    Decoding a war time diary

    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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    Coding theory: the first 50 years

    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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    Editorial

    • The Dearing report
    • Network capacity problem
    • References
  • article

    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.

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    Editorial

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

    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.
  • article

    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.
  • article

    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.