Thatsmaths

Mathematicians are an odd bunch. Isaac Newton was decidedly unpleasant, secretive and resentful while Carl Friedrich Gauss, according to several biogr(...)

An old nursery rhyme begins “Monday’s child is fair of face/Tuesday’s child is full of grace”. Perhaps character and personality were determined by th(...)

When decorating our Christmas trees, we aim to achieve an aesthetic balance. Let’s suppose that there is a plenitude of baubles, but that their colour(...)

The earthly globe is spherical; more precisely, it is an oblate spheroid, like a ball slightly flattened at the poles. More precisely still, it is a t(...)

Weather forecasts are getting better. Fifty years ago, predictions beyond one day ahead were of dubious utility. Now, forecasts out to a week ahead ar(...)

Pick a number; if it is even, divide it by 2; if odd, triple it and add 1. Now repeat the process, each time halving or else tripling and adding 1. He(...)

Applied mathematics is the use of maths to address questions and solve problems outside maths itself. Counting money, designing rockets and vaccines,(...)

There are ongoing rapid advances in the power and versatility of AI or artificial intelligence. Computers are now producing results in several fields (...)

One year ago, there were just two centibillionaires, Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates. Recently, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg has joined the Amazon and Micros(...)

The Drake Equation is a formula for the number of developed civilisations in our galaxy, the Milky Way. This number is determined by seven factors. So(...)