Article
Line drawing of Helen of Troy

Dynamic programming: an introduction

The previous feature, "Mathematics, marriage and finding somewhere to eat" 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...

Article
Wedding photo

Decoding a war time diary

An account of how a prisoner of war's diary was recently decoded. Donald Hill wrote his diary in a numerical code, disguised as a set of mathematical tables, while in Hong Kong during and after the Japanese invasion of 1941.

Article
Mars Rover

Coding theory: the first 50 years

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.

Article

Agner Krarup Erlang (1878 - 1929)

The mathematics underlying today's complex telephone networks is still based on his work. Erlang was the first person to study the problem of telephone networks.
Article
BT's worldwide network management centre

Call routing in telephone networks

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.

News story

Women in the history of mathematics

Mathematics is not only for men, says the author of the new booklet "Women in the History of Mathematics from Antiquity to the Nineteenth Century".

News story

More hailstones...

Many of our readers have asked for more information about the hailstrone sequence problem from the last issue.

News story

Long range forecast

This year, for the first time, the Met. Office is publishing an experimental long range forecast for the average Central England Temperature

News story

Kasparov defeated!

Chess world champion Gary Kasparov has been defeated by Deep Blue, the world's highest ranking chess computer.

Article

Editorial

  • Allergic to mathematics?
  • The inner beauty of pure mathematics
  • A journey with mathematics
  • Staff room