Space probes, like NASA's recent Pathfinder mission to Mars, have radio transmitters of only a few watts, but have to transmit pictures and scientific data across hundreds of millions of miles without the information being completely swamped by noise. Read about how coding theory helps.
In this issue's article "Mathematics, marriage and finding somewhere to eat", David Smith 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...
This letter appeared in The Independent and is reprinted with their kind permission.
Sir:
So, Peter Todd has told the British Psychological Society that the best strategy for finding a life partner is to examine a dozen, and then make a choice from those who come along later (report, 5 April).
This article appeared in The Independent, Saturday 5 April 1997 and is reprinted with their kind permission.
Your eyes meet across a crowded room and suddenly you know there is no one else for you. You have never felt this way before.
I have had several views on what infinity times 0 is and I would like to know your view and how you came to your answer. Please send your answer as soon as possible.
Oliver Swift
Infinity is not a number and so it cannot be multiplied by zero. This is because multiplication is an operation for combining two numbers to produce a third.
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Christine Vretta and Steve Smith are Second Year Joint Honours students at Keele University.
Christine Vretta
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.
This article appeared in The Independent, Wednesday 30 April 1997 and is reprinted with their kind permission.
The atmosphere in one polling company's office was described as "frantic" yesterday as pollsters prepared to publish their final figures tomorrow - the ones on which they will be judged. After the disaster of 1992, when the opinion polls mis-estimated the Tory lead by between seven and 11 percentage points, their reputation is on the line.
I have come across a problem to which I have so far been able to find no satisfactory answer. I wonder if any of your readers can help me!
A man witnesses a crime involving a taxi. He says that the taxi is blue. You know from previous research that witnesses are correct 80% of the time when making such statements. You also know that 85% of the taxis in the town are blue.
Have you ever been in an aeroplane on a smooth flight when suddenly the plane bumps up and down for a short time as it goes through turbulent air? The study of turbulence is used to understand a range of phenomena from the simple squirting of a jet of water to the activity of the sun.
