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Go Rio!
Here's a selection of our favourite articles on Olympic maths — from dressage, via ping pong, to athletics.
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Gearing up for gold
Inspired by Sara Storey's phenomenal gold medal we calculate whether we, and our bikes, have what it takes to triumph in our newfound quest for speed!
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Mixing doubles
Andy Murray and Laura Robson made a good team at London 2012, bringing home silver in the mixed doubles. But how do you make sure that the competing pair is the best you can pick from the team?
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Spinning the perfect serve
A new mathematical analysis of how to hit a winning serve shows that spin is the thing. Perhaps there's still time for Murray's coach to include some maths in his preparations for the match today...
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The logic of drug testing
London 2012 vowed to be the cleanest Olympics ever, with more than 6,000 tests on athletes for performance enhancing drugs. But when an athlete does fail a drug test can we really conclude that they are cheating? John Haigh does the maths.
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Mapping the medals
Predicting the final Olympic medal count is a black art. Sport, with all its intricacies and vagaries, is always susceptible to variations in form, weather conditions and simple random events. But we like a challenge! So without further ado, here is our predicted 2012 London Olympic medal count.
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2012 Medal count: how do our predictions stack up?
In our article Mapping the medals we came up with our very own prediction of the 2012 Olympic medal counts for the top 20 countries! This interactive map tells you how our predictions stack up: click on a country to see its actual medal count, our prediction and the results from 2008.
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Let the Games begin!
The eyes of the world will be on London tonight as the opening ceremony will mark the start of the London 2012 Olympic Games. The ceremony will feature the largest harmonically tuned bell in Europe, there'll be NHS dancers, the Queen will be there too of course, and the grand finale will be the Olympic torch lighting the cauldron. While London has been gearing up for these momentous events, we here at Plus have been busy too.
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When is a goal not a goal?
Remember Frank Lampard's disallowed goal in the 2010 World Cup match against Germany? The ball hit the crossbar, landed well behind the line but then bounced out again. And it all happened too quickly for the ref to spot it was a goal. How these kind of (non)-goals happen and what can we do about them?
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Walk, trot, gallop
Horses, like all animals, have a number of different gaits. But how can they perform these complicated leg movements without having to stop and think? And why do they switch to a new gait when they want to go faster? Mathematics can shed some light on these questions.
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Outer space: Canoeing and Kayaking
A simple question to ask about kayak races is whether having lots of paddlers helps or slows the boat down? The kayak with two paddlers has twice as many "engines" to power it but it also has twice as much weight to drag through the water. Which is the dominant factor?
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By the skin of their suits
The men's and women's 100 metre freestyle swimming races are set to be two of the most glamorous events of the London 2012 Olympic Games. Much has been made of the swimming events for London 2012 because the previous 2008 Beijing Olympics saw an unprecedented number of new world records, due to the use of controversial swimsuits. So how do these suits improve performance?