spherical harmonics

The Sun is no longer singing solo and is now part of a stellar choir

Maths in a minute

Want facts and want them fast? Our Maths in a minute series explores key mathematical concepts in just a few words.

The shower equation: Dealing with delay

Many processes, including climate change and the spread of COVID-19, involve a delay. Here's a beautiful equation designed to model such processes.
Complex square roots

How to take the square root of a complex number — and discover a beautiful new surface in the process.
Happy birthday Quicksort!

Next month sees the 60th birthday of a famous algorithm called Quicksort. We explore its origin, its workings, and some other work of its inventor Tony Hoare.
Maths in a minute: The positive predictive value

When you receive a positive test result for a disease, the chance you actually have it depends on how common the disease is.
Maths in a minute: Gradient descent algorithms

Whether you're lost on a mountainside, or training a neural network, you can rely on the gradient descent algorithm to show you the way!