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Editorial
- The league table lottery
- Plus and presidents
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Outer space: How to rig an election
It's easier than you think
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Article
What do you think you're worth?
Bonuses are a fact of business life. Last year the Guardian newspaper calculated that the cash rewards paid to London's financial chiefs comfortably outstripped the UK's entire transport budget. With such large sums at stake, envy is bound to raise its ugly head, nver a good thing for company morale. So how should you decide who gets how much? Steven J. Brams suggests a method that's not only
fair, but also encourages honesty.
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Article
Matrix: Simulating the world Part II: cellular automata
Lewis Dartnell turns the universe into a matrix to model traffic, forest fires and sprawling cities.
Article
Natural selection, maths and milk
According to Darwin, natural selection is the driving force of evolution. It's a beautifully simple idea, but given the thousands of years that are involved, nobody has ever seen it in action. So how can we tell whether or not natural selection occurs and which of our traits are a result of it? In this article Charlotte Mulcare uses milk to show how maths and stats can provide genetic
answers.
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Reconstructing the tree of life
Next year is a great one for biology. Not only will we celebrate 150 years since the publication of On the origin of species, but also 200 years since the birth of its author, Charles Darwin. At the heart of Darwin's theory of evolution lies a beautifully simple mathematical object: the evolutionary tree. In this article we look at how maths is used to reconstruct and understand it.
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Maths and climate change: the melting Arctic
The Arctic ice cap is melting fast and the consequences are grim. Mathematical modelling is key to predicting how much longer the ice will be around and assessing the impact of an ice free Arctic on the rest of the planet. Plus spoke to Peter Wadhams from the Polar Ocean Physics Group at the University of Cambridge to get a glimpse of the group's work.
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Editorial
The Plus anniversary year — A word from the editors
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String theory: From Newton to Einstein and beyond
String theory is a theory of everything in which everything's made of strings — but why strings? What do they do? Find out in our equation-free introduction for beginners.
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An almighty coincidence
Life is full of coincidences, but how do you work out if something is really as unlikely as it seems? In this article Rob Eastaway and John Haigh find chance in church and work out the odds.