A Mobius strip. Credit: cosma/shutterstock.com You have most likely encountered one-sided objects hundreds of times in your daily life – like the universal symbol for recycling, found printed on the backs of aluminum cans and plastic bottles. This mathematical object is called a Mobius strip. It has fascinated environmentalists, artists, engineers, mathematicians and many others…
Probably the finest moment in the working life of Sir James Mirrlees came in 1968 when, he recalled, “I finally cracked the optimal tax problem … it came in a flash and was very satisfactory.” Mirrlees, who has died aged 82, arrived at his conclusions about taxation in the middle of Harold Wilson’s government, when…
Hi guzzlers, Today’s puzzle concerns the South American language Aymara. It’s testing you on the sort of linguistics skills that might help you get you a job at Google, according today’s article in which a Google exec says that an understanding of language is the key to the next giant leap in technology. The roughly…
The INLA approach developed by Rue and colleagues has been used in the Malaria Atlas Project (MAP), which disseminates free, accurate, up-to-date information on malaria, aims to limit the spread of the disease. Credit: MALARIA ATLAS PROJECT Tools developed by Håvard Rue have transformed data analysis, interpretation and communication, and are applied broadly: from modeling…
Credit: CC0 Public Domain Mark Glickman is Fixing a Hole in Beatles lore. A senior lecturer in statistics, Glickman worked with Ryan Song, a former statistics student at Harvard, and Jason Brown, a professor at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, to tackle an enduring Beatles mystery—who wrote “In My Life”? As most Beatles fans…
Split-pylon concept bridge to cross Strait of Gibraltar, with two 5km main spans. Credit: Helen Fairclough Newly identified bridge forms could enable significantly longer bridge spans to be achieved in the future, potentially making a crossing over the Strait of Gibraltar, from the Iberian Peninsula to Morocco, feasible. The new bridge forms use a new…
The black dot on the left figure marks an unstable vertex. After an avalanche, three neighbouring vertices become unstable and will collapse Credit: Nikita Kalinin, Higher School of Economics – Saint-Petersburg An international group of researchers (the first author is Nikita Kalinin, Higher School of Economics—Saint-Petersburg, the last author is Ernesto Lupercio, CINVESTAV, Mexico) has…
Credit: Eva Cornejo Coba/Shutterstock When multiple passengers on a flight from Dubai to New York recently were taken ill with flu-like symptoms, the plane was understandably quarantined. It’s not too hard to imagine how international travel could quickly help spread a new disease around the world. But surprisingly, grounding planes in such a situation might…
Each new academic year, a fresh batch of year 7 students arrive in my maths classroom. One of the things I try to do is face head-on a question that they might not yet know they need answering, but will soon be asking unless I deal with it from the off. “What are you doing…
Earlier today I asked you the following puzzle: You’re single and looking for love. In front of you are three doors. Behind each door is a prospective partner. Your mission is to couple up with your best possible match. Imagine you chose a door at random. If you couple up with the person behind it,…