Marianne Freiberger is Editor of Plus. She joined Plus in 2005 after doing a PhD and then a three year postdoc at Queen Mary, University of London. As a researcher she worked in complex dynamics, the area of pure maths that has given us the Mandelbrot set. In the world of maths communication she has been Editor-in-Chief of the Mathscareers website, given presentations to mathematicians about how to communicate their work to a wider audience, and to journalists about how to deal with maths in the media. She has been a TEDx speaker and an invited speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians in 2010.
Together with Rachel Thomas, Marianne has co-authored several popular maths books including Numericon: A journey through the hidden lives of numbers and Understanding numbers, and were editors on the book 50: visions of mathematics. They were Science Editors for the Discovery+ documentary series Universe Unravelled about the work of the Stephen Hawking Centre for Theoretical Cosmology.
In October 2022 Marianne and Rachel received a SPI-M-O Award for Modelling and Data Support (SAMDS) from the UK's Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies. This award recognised their work with the JUNIPER modelling consortium to provide a wide audience (including public, press, policy makers and government) with clear and accessible explanations of some of the maths that was vital in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic.
In this final part, you can meet the researchers themselves and find out about the real research questions that Julia and some of her colleagues are working on!
Could AI help judges deliver fair and transparent sentences? A recent study group involving law experts and mathematicians explored the challenges involved.
We continue our exploration of the potential use of AI in sentencing.
At the beginning of an epidemic the number of infected people grows exponentially. But why does the number e appear in descriptions of this growth?
How can we use mathematics to model the spread of a disease?
What is the growth rate and what does it tell us about an epidemic?
What is herd immunity and what does it have to do with a number called R?
We guide you through an exciting recent breakthrough in the world of topology, involving something called the telescope conjecture.
