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Decoding Da Vinci: Finance, functions and art

Dan Brown in his book, The Da Vinci Code, talks about the "divine proportion" as having a "fundamental role in nature". Brown's ideas are not completely without foundation, as the proportion crops up in the mathematics used to describe the formation of natural structures like snail's shells and plants, and even in Alan Turing's work on animal coats. But Dan Brown does not talk about mathematics, he talks about a number. What is so special about this number?
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Understanding uncertainty: Visualising probabilities

Probabilities and statistics: they are everywhere, but they are hard to understand and can be counter-intuitive. So what's the best way of communicating them to an audience that doesn't have the time, desire, or background to get stuck into the numbers? This article explores modern visualisation techniques and finds that the right picture really can be worth a thousand words.

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Maths behind the rainbow

Keats complained that a mathematical explanation of rainbows robs them of their magic, conquering "all mysteries by rule and line". But rainbow geometry is just as elegant as the rainbows themselves.

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Join the celebration of mind!

It's 21st of October and for puzzle lovers this can only mean one thing: the G4G Celebration of mind. This annual party celebrates the legacy of Martin Gardner, magician, writer and father of recreational maths, with mathemagical events in his honour happening all over the world.
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Shattering crystal symmetries

In 1982 Dan Shechtman discovered a crystal that would revolutionise chemistry. He has just been awarded the 2011 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his discovery — but has the Nobel committee missed out a chance to honour a mathematician for his role in this revolution as well?
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A fly walks round a football

What makes a perfect football? Anyone who plays or simply watches the game could quickly list the qualities. The ball must be round, retain its shape, be bouncy but not too lively and, most importantly, be capable of impressive speeds. We find out that this last point is all down to the ball's surface, the most prized research goal in ball design.
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Meet the gyroid

What do butterflies, ketchup, microcellular structures, and plastics have in common? It's a curious minimal surface called the gyroid.

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Outer space: A very peculiar principle

If you manage a large organisation, then people will come and go. There are always decisions to make about promoting people, promising newcomers versus experienced middle managers, all of whom are aspiring to move up the corporate ladder. But is it better to promote the least competent rather than the most competent? Some new research suggests that it may be.
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This is not a carrot: Paraconsistent mathematics

Paraconsistent mathematics is a type of mathematics in which contradictions may be true. In such a system it is perfectly possible for a statement A and its negation not A to both be true. How can this be, and be coherent? What does it all mean?

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What is time?

Everyone knows what time is. We can practically feel it ticking away, marching on in the same direction with horrifying regularity. Time has enslaved the Western world and become our most precious commodity. Turn it over to the physicists however, and it begins to morph, twist and even crumble away. So what is time exactly?
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Time and the multiverse

Why can we remember the past and not the future? Why does time appear to move in only one direction when the laws of physics have no preferred direction in time? According to one physicist, it might be because we live in a bubble multiverse.