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Frugal nature: Euler and the calculus of variations

Phil Wilson continues our series on the life and work of Leonhard Euler, who would have turned 300 this year. This article looks at the calculus of variations and a mysterious law of nature that has caused some scientists to reach out for god.
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Evolutionary maths

How did we evolve our capacity for maths? Does maths piggy-back on our ability for language, or is it a completely separate faculty? Is it dependent on culture? Plus spoke to the cognitive psychologist Rosemary Varley to find some answers.
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Understanding uncertainty

What's the risk of passive smoking? Or climate change? How big is the terrorist threat? And should we trust league tables? These issues concern all of us, but it's not always easy to make sense of the barrage of media information. David Spiegelhalter, Winton Professor for the Public Understanding of Risk, gives Plus his take on uncertainty.
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Arithmetic, bones and counting

John Napier was a clever man indeed. Besides inventing the logarithm, he developed ingenious calculating devices that fully exploit the power of the positional system. In this article Chris Sangwin tells you how to make your own set of Napier's bones and perform mathemagic with an interactive checker board.
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Plus leaves the classroom

Former Plus editor Helen Joyce explains how Plus made it big as a part of our series to celebrate Plus's tenth anniversary.
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Editorial

  • Plus 100 —the best maths of the last century
  • More maths grads
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limit set

Non-Euclidean geometry and Indra's pearls

If you've ever redecorated a bathroom, you'll know that there are only so many ways in which you can tile a flat plane. But once you move into the curved world of hyperbolic geometry, possibilities become endless and the most amazing fractal structures ensue. Caroline Series and David Wright give a short introduction to the maths behind their beautiful images.

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Quantum geometry

One of the many strange ideas from quantum mechanics is that space isn't continuous but consists of tiny chunks. Ordinary geometry is useless when it comes to dealing with such a space, but algebra makes it possible to come up with a model of spacetime that might do the trick. And it can all be tested by a satellite. Shahn Majid met up with Plus to explain.
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cake

What is the Area of a Circle?

You might know the famous formula for an area of a circle, but why does this formula work? Tom Körner's explanation really is a piece of cake, served up with a hefty estimate of pi.