Articles

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.

Mathematics, marriage and finding somewhere to eatHow do you choose a partner? Is it an irrational choice or is it made rationally, based on a mathematical model which analyses the best potential partner you are likely to meet?

Dynamic programming: an introductionThe 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...

Decoding a war time diaryAn 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.

Coding theory: the first 50 yearsSpace 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.

What mathematicians get up toAfter 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.

Mathematical mysteries: the Goldbach conjectureCan every even number greater than 2 can be written as the sum of two primes? It's one of the trickiest questions in maths.

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.

Call routing in telephone networksFind 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.

Testing Bernoulli: a simple experimentHere is an experiment that you can easily do yourself to test Bernoulli's equation. There are also 2 questions and answers.

Editorial

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

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.