"Marvellous, surprising, crystal-clear, amazing, stimulating, delightful, fascinating" — this is how our reviewer described Nonplussed!, a book published last year by by the same author.

In their new book John Bryant and Chris Sangwin explore the complex problems and challenges facing engineers and mathematicians now and through the ages.

Tiling troubles

Exhibition design is not a career that the mathematically inclined tend to think about, let alone pursue. Barry Phipps is the first interdisciplinary fellow with the Kettle's Yard gallery in Cambridge. His remit is to develop projects of an interdisciplinary nature — "to find the common ground between things." Whilst most people think that art and science are two completely separate non-overlapping areas of human endeavour, Phipps does not see it this way.

The primes are the building blocks of our number system, but there's no general formula that will give you all of them. If you want them, you have to hunt them down one by one. Abigail Kirk investigates a method that does just that.

Not so long ago, if you had a medical complaint, doctors had to open you up to see what it was. These days they have a range of sophisticated imaging techniques at their disposal, saving you the risk and pain of an operation. Chris Budd and Cathryn Mitchell look at the maths that isn't only responsible for these medical techniques, but also for much of the digital revolution.