List by Author: Chris Budd

Maths in a minute: The brazil nut effect

Why your muesli shakes down in unexpected ways.

Energetic maths

Producing electricity securely, safely, reliably and cheaply has many challenges. Chris Budd explains that the answer to many of these issues is maths.

How much maths can you eat?

Find out how maths helps to feed the world.

Where's the maths in beer?

There's actually quite a lot of maths in beer. Here are three beer-related maths stories.

Maths in a minute: Fourier series

How the heat equation inspired the maths that powers the entertainment industry.

Maths in a minute: Maths and navigation

How the need to locate your location at sea led to some interesting mathematics.

Maths in a minute: Maths and communication

A quick look at the role of mathematics in communication — from making and breaking codes to making sure messages arrive intact.

Climate change: Does it all add up?

An insightful look at the climate models that predict our future.

Climate modelling made easy

Make your own climate prediction with this simple, but powerful, model!

Big Data

Everybody's talking about Big Data. But what exactly do they mean?

Eight great reasons to do maths

In 2012 the UK government launched a list of the Eight Great technologies of the future. Here's what they are and what role maths has to play in them.

How to add up quickly

The number pi can be expressed beautifully in terms of infinite sums. For practical purposes though, these sums are rather disappointing: they converge slowly, so you need to sum a large number of terms to get accurate estimates of pi. Here's a clever way to make them converge faster.