News story
Is now a good time?
Mathematics is helping machines decide when is the best time to interrupt us with a call or email.
News story
Mind the gap
Can Dan Goldston and Cem Yalcin Yildrim repair the hole in their proof to make the biggest breakthrough in prime number theory for 80 years?
News story
Understanding influenza
Researchers have used mathematical modelling to understand the evolution of the influenza virus.
News story
Mathematical millionaire?
The mathematics of Grigori Perelman may earn him a million dollars, if no holes are found in his proof of the Poincaré Conjecture.
Puzzle
Rolling with money
Can money turn the monarchy upside-down?
Puzzle
News story
Write maths and win cash!
Win cold hard cash and bring mathematics to the people by entering the THES and OUP science writing competition.
Article
How maths can make you rich and famous: Part II
One million dollars is waiting to be won by anyone who can solve one of the grand mathematical challenges of the 21st century. In the second of two articles, Chris Budd looks at the well-posedness of the Navier-Stokes equations.
Article
The crystal ball
If you had a crystal ball that allowed you to see your future, what would you arrange differently about your finances? Plus talks to the Government Actuary, Chris Daykin about the pensions crisis, and how actuaries use statistical and modelling techniques to plan for all our futures.
Article
A whirlpool of numbers
The Riemann Hypothesis is probably the hardest unsolved problem in all of mathematics, and one of the most important. It has to do with prime numbers - the building blocks of arithmetic. Nick Mee, together with Sir Arthur C. Clarke, tells us about the patterns hiding inside numbers.
Article
Editorial
- Optional maths - should students be able to give up maths at age 14?
- Outer space - In what will now be a regular feature, mathematician and cosmologist John D. Barrow shares some maths that's amused and intrigued him.
- Readers' corner- More Strange activities for last issue's Ship of Fools!
Article
Model behaviour
To study a system, mathematicians begin by identifying its most crucial elements, and try to describe them in simple mathematical terms. As Phil Wilson tells us, this simplification is the essence of mathematical modelling.