As mentioned already on this site and others, this year marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of famed British mathematician Alan Turing.
The outline of his remarkable life and sad ending has by now…
Finland has much to offer Australia and other nations when it comes to mathematics education.
StreetFly JZ
There’s been plenty of commentary recently on the “numeracy crisis” threatening the economies of many developed nations, including Australia.
A 2009 report by the National Academies in the US was not…
Uncertainty exists – but that's no excuse for a lack of action.
@Doug88888
These are painful times for those hoping to see an international consensus and substantive action on global warming.
In the US, Republican presidential front-runner Mitt Romney said in June 2011: “The…
There's far more to the popular maths puzzle than putting numbers in a box.
zlovall
Last month, a team led by Gary McGuire from University College Dublin in Ireland made an announcement: they had proven you can’t have a solvable Sudoku puzzle with less than 17 numbers already filled in…
We can't tame the oceans, but modelling can help us better understand them.
Badruddeen
Last year will go on record as one of significant natural disasters both in Australia and overseas. Indeed, the flooding of the Brisbane River in January is still making news as the Queensland floods inquiry…
Our present achievements will look like child's play in a few years.
Rinoninha
What do iPhones, Twitter, Netflix, cleaner cities, safer cars, state-of-the-art environmental management and modern medical diagnostics have in common? They are all made possible by Moore’s Law.
Moore…
The humble pigeon mightn't look smart, but it's no bird-brain.
Seamoor
We humans have long been interested in defining the abilities that set us apart from other species. Along with capabilities such as language, the ability to recognise and manipulate numbers (“numerical…
Momentum is gathering behind calls to pardon the father of computer science.
BinaryApe
You may have read the British Government is being petitioned to grant a posthumous pardon to one of the world’s greatest mathematicians and most successful codebreakers, Alan Turing. You may also have…
Nearly 90% of people have trouble understanding stats.
gbrenne
Does the thought of p-values and regressions make you break out in a cold sweat? Never fear – read on for answers to some of those burning statistical questions that keep you up 87.9% of the night.
What…
There's a contradiction between classical and quantum theories.
TonZ
MILLENNIUM PRIZE SERIES: The Millennium Prize Problems are seven mathematics problems laid out by the Clay Mathematics Institute in 2000. They’re not easy— a correct solution to any one results in a US…
Our best efforts to gauge threats may be counter-productive.
bre pettiss
Assessing risk is something everyone must do every day. Yet few are very good at it, and there are significant consequences of the public’s collective inability to accurately assess risk.
As a first and…
What will be the next number in this sequence?
crisinplymouth
MILLENNIUM PRIZE SERIES: The Millennium Prize Problems are seven mathematics problems laid out by the Clay Mathematics Institute in 2000. They’re not easy—a correct solution to any one results in a US…
If this doesn't bake your hippy noodle, nothing will.
stuartpilbrow
MILLENNIUM PRIZE SERIES: The Millennium Prize Problems are seven mathematics problems laid out by the Clay Mathematics Institute in 2000. They’re not easy – a correct solution to any one results in a US…
The problem's been solved … but the sweet treats were declined.
Back to the Cutting Board
MILLENNIUM PRIZE SERIES: The Millennium Prize Problems are seven mathematics problems laid out by the Clay Mathematics Institute in 2000. They’re not easy – a correct solution to any one results in a US…
Deciding whether a statement is true is a computational head-scratcher.
rofi
MILLENNIUM PRIZE SERIES: The Millennium Prize Problems are seven mathematics problems laid out by the Clay Mathematics Institute in 2000. They’re not easy – a correct solution to any one results in a US…
The Hodge Conjecture has stimulated the development of revolutionary tools and techniques.
sensesmaybenumbed
MILLENNIUM PRIZE SERIES: The Millennium Prize Problems are seven mathematics problems laid out by the Clay Mathematics Institute in 2000. They’re not easy – a correct solution to any one results in a US…
How fluids move has fascinated researchers since the birth of science.
tonyhall
MILLENNIUM PRIZE SERIES: The Millennium Prize Problems are seven mathematics problems laid out by the Clay Mathematics Institute in 2000. They’re not easy – a correct solution to any one results in a US…
If you want to optimise scramjets you're going to need the rule of the jungle.
EPA/NSAS
My intention with this article is to give an intuitive and non-technical introduction to the field of evolutionary algorithms, particularly with regards to optimisation.
If I get you interested, I think…
We know the universe is vast, but how do we measure the distances between things?
Dave Scrimshaw.
Let’s talk numbers for a moment.
The moon is approximately 384,000 kilometres away, and the sun is approximately 150 million kilometres away. The mean distance between Earth and the sun is known as the…
Australia ranks poorly for the number of graduates emerging with a science degree.
epSos.de
Australia faces many big challenges – in the economy, health, energy, water, climate change, infrastructure, sustainable agriculture and the preservation of our precious biodiversity.
To meet these, we…
Are we getting closer to solving one of life's greatest mysteries?
jcoterhals
During a lunch in the summer of 1950, physicists Enrico Fermi, Edward Teller and Herbert York were chatting about a recent New Yorker cartoon depicting aliens abducting trash cans in flying saucers. Suddenly…
A universe composed differently could still support complex life.
Susan NYC
Welcome to Peer Review, a series in which we ask leading academics to review books written by people working in the same field.
Here Geraint Lewis, Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Sydney…
The cut-and-choose technique has been preventing tantrums since antiquity.
free form by prudence
I work on the mathematics of sharing resources, which has led me to consider emotions such as envy, behaviour such as risk-taking and the best way to cut a cake.
Like, I suspect, many women, my wife enjoys…
Do we take the sophistication of numbers one to ten for granted?
duncan
While adding up your grocery bill in the supermarket, you’re probably not thinking how important or sophisticated our number system is.
But the discovery of the present system, by unknown mathematicians…
Improved modelling will help predict future climatic events, like changing summer rainfall.
AAP
Region by region projections of how climate is likely to change over the coming decades help to make the prospect of global warming more tangible and relevant.
Picturing the climate we are likely to have…
Alan Turing, through pure mathematics, laid the foundations for the modern computer.
Leo Reynolds
What is pure mathematics? What do pure mathematicians do? Why is pure mathematics important?
These are questions I’m often confronted with when people discover I do pure mathematics.
I always manage…
More maths teachers means better outcomes for students
Flickr
By Jan Thomas, Australian Mathematical Sciences Institute
There is a crisis in the education system, and it’s affecting the life chances of many young Australians. The number of secondary teaching graduates with adequate qualifications to teach mathematics is…
Knowing what's hard and easy is, in itself, quite hard.
JuniorMonkey
When you look at a train or university timetable you don’t think about how the timetable was made – you’re thinking about your trip or where your next class is.
In that moment, you couldn’t care less…
Money should be no object when it comes to the numbers game.
krissyho
Welcome to the second instalment of If I had a blank cheque … a series in which leading researchers reveal what they could (and would) do in their discipline if money were no object.
Today we hear from…
When you know the numbers, things get a whole lot easier.
Roberto Bouza
GAMBLING IN AUSTRALIA – Some say “punting is a mug’s game”. But is this always true, or can an astute gambler make long-term profits?
Certainly not from casino games. Casinos make profits by paying less…
Is it a plane? No, it's Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics.
William West/AFP
Watching films such as Superman Returns or The Day after Tomorrow, you would have seen dramatic sequences of surging water and crumbling buildings.
While doing so, mathematics was probably the last thing…
Some people have argued that Pi’s days are numbered and that other tools, such as tau, could do its job more efficiently. As someone who has studied Pi throughout his entire working life, my response to…
