Includes bibliographical references.

Foreward: A bad mathematician's apology / Dara O Briain -- What's the problem with mathematics? / David Acheson -- The mathematics of messages / Alan J. Aw -- Decathlon : the art of scoring points / John D. Barrow -- Queen Dido and the mathematics of the extreme / Greg Bason -- Can strings tie things together? / David Berman -- Dimples, grooves, and knuckleballs / Ken Bray -- Pigs didn't fly but swine flu / Ellen Brooks-Pollock and Ken Eames -- Bill Tutte : unsung Bletchley hero / Chris Budd -- What's the use of a quadratic equation? / Chris Budd and Chris Sangwin -- Tony Hilton Royle Skyrme / Alan Champneys -- The mathematics of obesity / Carson C. Chow -- It's a small world really / Tony Crilly -- How does mathematics help at a murder scene? / Graham Divall -- Mathematics : the language of the universe / Marcus Du Sautoy -- The troublesome geometry of CAT scanning / Richard Elwes -- The mathematics of sports gambling / Alistair Fitt -- Pythagoras's Theorem: a² : A conversation with Freeman Dyson / Marianne Freiberger and Rachel Thomas ; A glass of bubbly / Paul Glendinning ; The influenza virus : it's all in the packaging / Julia Gog ; Solving the Bristol bridge problem / Thilo Gross ; All ravens are black: puzzles and paradoxes in probability and statistics / David Hand ; The Tower of Hanoi: where mathematics meets psychology / Andreas M. Hinz and Marianne Freiberger ; Career: a sample path / Philip Holmes ; Sweets in the jar / Steve Humble ; Mary Cartwright / Lisa Jardine ; The fallibility of mathematics / Adam Jasko ; Anecdotes of Dr Barrow / Tom Körner ; Finding Apollo / Adam Kucharski ; The golden ratio in astronomy and astrophysics / Mario Livio ; The high-power hypar / Peter Lynch ; This is not a carrot: paraconsistent mathematics / Maarten McKubre-Jordens ; The mystery of Groombridge Place / Alexander Masters and Simon Norton -- Pythagoras's Theorem b² : Mathematicians at the movies: Sherlock Holmes vs Professor Moriarty / Derek E. Moulton and Alain Goriely; The mysterious number 6174 / Yutaka Nishiyama ; Percolating possibilities / Colva Roney-Dougal and Vince Vatter ; Milestones on a non-Euclidean journey / Caroline Series ; Simpson's rule / Simon Singh ; Risking your life / David Spiegelhalter ; Networks and illusions / Ian Stewart ; Emmy Noether: against the odds / Danielle Stretch ; Of catastrophes and creodes / Paul Taylor ; Conic section hide and seek / Rachel Thomas ; Sir James Lighthill: a life in waves / Ahmer Wadee ; Fail safe or fail dangerous? / Ahmer Wadee and Alan Champneys ; Leapfrogging into the future / Paul Williams ; Motorway mathematics / Eddie Wilson ; The philosophy of applied mathematics / Phil Wilson ; Mighty morphogenesis / Thomas Woolley ; Called to the barcode / Andrew Wrigley ; Roughly fifty-fifty? / Günter M. Ziegler -- Pythagoras's theorem: c².

To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications (IMA), this book is designed to showcase the beauty of mathematics--including images inspired by mathematical problems--together with its unreasonable effectiveness and applicability, without frying your brain.

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