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Careers with maths
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Rupa Patel reflects to Plus on her work as a financial engineer

A favourite from the archive...
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When we finally meet the Martians, John Conway believes they are going to want to talk mathematics.

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March 2008
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stopping time

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Backgammon is said to be one of the oldest games in the world. In this article, Jochen Blath and Peter Mörters discuss one particularly interesting aspect of the game - the doubling cube. They show how a model using Brownian motion can help a player to decide when to double or accept a double.

Tags: strategy : doubling cube : stochastic process : Brownian motion : Independence : stopping time : Backgammon : doubling strategy : random walk


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In issue 29 of Plus, we heard how a simple mathematical equation became the subject of a debate in the UK parliament. Chris Budd and Chris Sangwin continue the story of the mighty quadratic equation.

Tags: Bernoulli equation : Navier-Stokes equations : gravity : ellipse : chaos : differential equation : public understanding of mathematics : quadratic equation : circle : parabola : hyperbola : acceleration : stopping time : Galileo : Newton : pendulum : Euler : complex number : logistic map : Copernicus : Kepler