Articles

  • 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

    Editorial

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

    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.
  • 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.
  • 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

    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

    Daniel Bernoulli and the making of the fluid equation

    Daniel Bernoulli (1700-1782) discovered the relationship between the density of a fluid in a pipe, the speed it is travelling in the pipe and the pressure exerted by the fluid against the walls of the pipe. This is the story of what happened.
  • article
    icon

    Student interview - Mark Langley

    Mark Langley, a student at Hills Road Sixth Form College in Cambridge, tells us about his experiences doing A-level Mathematics.