Mathematics is a maze, according to Ian Stewart at the Royal Institutions Christmas Lecture.

New technology has provided us with some amazing images - satellite images, medical images, even images beamed back from Mars. Julian Stander tells us about the increasing role of statistics in interpreting them.

In his second article, David Henwood explains the role of mathematics in the design of Hi-Fi loudspeakers.

Coincidences are familiar to us all but what are the so-called laws of chance? From coin tossing to freak weather events, Geoffrey Grimmett explains how probability is at the heart of it all.

• What's in a name?
• Disaster

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.

• The Dearing report
• Network capacity problem
• References

Sir Walter Raleigh is perhaps best known for laying down his cloak in the mud for Queen Elizabeth I. But, he also started a mathematical quest which to this day remains unsolved.

In issue No 1 we introduced GIMPS, the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search. Well, on Sunday 24th August 1997 they did it again.

Numbers like Pi have no repeating pattern. So just how accurately do we know what it is?

COSMOS, the world's first national cosmology supercomputer, has been launched.