plus.maths.org

Packages

Understand the maths behind health and medicine. Read the latest and join the debate!

One of the greatest advances in the biomedical sciences has been the unravelling of our genetic code. This new understanding sheds light on what makes organisms function and how they are related to each other, helps to combat diseases, and to convict criminals. But it also poses great mathematical challenges: the genetic revolution is an information explosion which can only be tamed using mathematical methods.

Infectious diseases hardly ever disappear from the headlines — swine flu is only the last in a long list containing SARS, bird flu, HIV, and childhood diseases like mumps, measles and rubella. If it's not the disease itself that hits the news, then it's the vaccines with their potential side effects. It can be hard to tell the difference between scare mongering and responsible reporting,
because media coverage rarely provides a look behind the scenes. So how do scientists reach the conclusions they do?

How do you judge the risks and benefits of new medical treatments, or of lifestyle choices? With a finite health care budget, how do you decide which treatments should be made freely available on the NHS? Historically, decisions like these have been made on the basis of doctors' individual experiences with how these treatments perform, but over recent decades the approach to answering these questions has become increasingly rational.

Teacher package: Trigonometry

This teacher package brings together our material on trigonometry, from problems about simple triangles to the wavy behaviour of trig functions.

Teacher package: Maths and art

Maths is all about patterns and rhythms, so it's no surprise that there's plenty of maths in art. Whether it's the visual or the performing arts, maths can be a tool, an inspiration, or simply something that's naturally contained within the structures and patterns.

The year 2009 was International Year of Astronomy, and to celebrate, we asked you what you'd most like to know about your Universe in a series of online polls. You came up with seven questions, which we put to world-leading astronomers and cosmologists. Find their answers in seven articles, as well as some podcasts.

Introducing Andrew Wiles

In these two short videos the legendary Andrew Wiles talks about what it was like to prove Fermat's Last Theorem, and what it feels like to do maths.
Image © Heidelberg Laureate Forum Foundation / Flemming – 2016
Counting the trees of life

How many possible genetic relationships are there between a collection of different species? The answer is mind-bogglingly large.
Political tides

Politician Douglas Carswell has been arguing with scientists about what causes the tides. We've figured out who's right.
Calculating the multiverse

If there's a multiverse, then how many of its component universes are like our own?
Five of Euler's best

Five favourite problems inspired by Leonhard Euler, one of the greatest mathematicians of all time.

Tweets by @plusmathsorg