Maths
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Maths
Birthday Paradox
How many people in your class share a birthday? The answer is probably more than you think.
Problem with a capital P
Wouldn't life be so much simpler if solving a problem was as easy as checking the answer fits?
Knot just a piece of string
Have you ever struggled to untie a particularly tight knot, battled with the jumbled mess of cables hidden behind your PC, or wondered why your shoelaces won't stay tied? If so, you're in good company, as mathematicians have wrestled with knots for over 200 years.
Journey to another dimension
We live in a three-dimensional world, where the familiar directions of left-right, backward-forward, and up-down dictate everything that we see and experience. Three's not enough for mathematicians though, as they can explore worlds of four, five, or even a million dimensions.
What’s the biggest number?
To our ancestors, a million was as big as numbers needed to get. There was no need to invoke the billons of finance or the terabytes of computing.
Rubik’s Cube
The best selling toy of all time is the Rubik’s cube. Easy to scramble, difficult to solve, many people think those who can complete the brightly coloured Czech invention are very clever.
A universal language
There are many native tongues used around the world, but everyone shares the language of mathematics.
Cube Puzzle winners and solution
The Cube Puzzle was a challenge brought to the Big Bang London courtesy of the MathsCareers Team.
Golden numbers
Can maths make things beautiful? Certain geometric shapes and ratios crop up again and again in art and nature.
Randomness at work
Random behaviour is all around us, whether it's walking down a busy street or peering down a microscope.
Life without a calculator
How did people deal with big numbers before the invention of the calculator?
A colourful problem
How many colours do you need to fill in a map? The answer is more complicated than you'd think...
Solved at Last
Could you imagine spending years working on a mathematical problem, then becoming famous worldwide once you solved it?
Divine inspiration
A self-taught genius from India and one of the greatest mathematicians of the 20th century. He believed mathematical ideas were visions from God, giving him a unique style of maths that helped solve problems Western mathematicians couldn’t.
A mathematical legacy
Pythagoras was an ancient Greek philosopher who discovered the mathematical structure behind music during the 6th century BC. He also came up with the famous theorem for the sides of a right-angled triangle: a² + b² = c².
Making monsters
Mathematicians used to worry about fractals, until they realised just how useful these ‘monster curves’ are.
What has just one side and gets in a twist?
It’s not a joke, but a strange mathematical object called a Möbius strip. Why not make one at home?
What use is maths?
You may wonder what connects the maths you do in school to the real world. Will you ever have to solve an equation or find an angle outside your classroom? Maths is very useful and is everywhere in everyday life.
