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Jump into bed with Dr Clio Cresswell and discover just how mathematics can unlock the secrets of love, lust and life's search for the ideal partner. Answering such questions as - just how many lovers should you have before settling down, why are you attracted to some people and not others, and just what is it that makes your biological clock tick?

International audience ; It can be said that mathematics education in Japan was started in 1872 when the school system was established. Since that establishment era, controversies have emerged time and again in mathematics education in Japan. Through these controversies, debates have been held on views on mathematics education such as how mathematics ought to be taught and what constitutes knowledge concerning numbers, quantities, and shapes that is desirable for students to acquire. In this paper, I shall look back at how views on mathematics education in Japan have developed since the Meiji era from the perspective of such controversies on mathematics education. As the controversies on mathematics education, the four phases are picked up. The first is Theoretical Mathematics and the Enumeration Principle. The second is Controversy over Formal Building. The third is Conventional Teaching of Mathematics and the Creation of Mathematics. The forth is Relationship between Daily Life and Mathematics. With regard to the conflict between theoretical arithmetic and the enumeration principle, debates were held over which policy to adopt in the process of editing the first government–designated textbook which was published in 1905. The conflict was ultimately settled when it was decided that the enumeration principle would be adopted. Attention must be paid to the fact that this conflict was taking place in an era when it was questioned what constitutes mathematics education in introducing the modern education system in Japan. In the controversy over formal building in 1920's , both the opponents and proponents based their arguments on overseas theories and survey results. The controversy was not settled in the form of one view being adopted while the other view was discarded in the education policy and the editorial policy concerning government-designated textbooks. Regarding formal building, assertions regarding the objectives of mathematics education and what is desirable for children to acquire are at the basis of ...

This text is concerned with those aspects of mathematics that are necessary for first-degree students of chemistry. It is written from the point of view that an element of mathematical rigour is essential for a proper appreciation of the scope and limitations of mathematical methods, and that the connection between physical principles and their mathematical formulation requires at least as much study as the mathematical principles themselves. It is written with chemistry students particularly in mind because that subject provides a point of view that differs in some respects from that of students of other scientific disciplines. Chemists in particular need insight into three­ dimensional geometry and an appreciation of problems involving many variables. It is also a subject that draws particular benefit from having available two rigorous disciplines, those of mathematics and of thermodynamics. The benefit of rigour is that it provides a degree of certainty which is valuable in a subject of such complexity as is provided by the behaviour of real chemical systems. As an experimen­ tal science, we attempt in chemistry to understand and to predict behaviour by combining precise experimental measurement with such rigorous theory as may be at the time available; these seldom provide a complete picture but do enable areas of uncertainty to be identified

International audience ; The scale and scope of mathematics support within UK universities have grown significantly since the 1990s. Mathematics support has evolved from a 'cottage industry' initiated by enthusiasts into a main-line student support provision overseen by institutional senior managers. Over this 25+ year period, the importance of the mathematical sciences in other disciplines has similarly boomed. No longer is it just engineering and physics undergraduates who need to acquire highly developed mathematical skills. Today geographers, bioscientists, sociologists and political scientists (to name but a few) have to be more skilled than ever before with understanding mathematical and statistical models and methods, particularly if they are to be able to access the international research literature and compete in the international employment market. Just as in the 1980s and 1990s, the Engineering Council produced reports warning of 'the mathematics problem', so in the 2000s and 2010s, the British Council and Royal Society of Arts have done the same. This presentation will outline how mathematics support has developed throughout the UK to meet this increasing demand. Whilst the initial impetus for mathematics support came from a desire to improve the mathematical learning of students from other disciplines, it is an indisputable fact that a significant proportion of the users of mathematics support has been, and remains, mathematics undergraduates. This gives us cause to reflect: why is mathematics support so attractive to mathematics undergraduates? To answer this question, we explore the views of mathematics undergraduate students as expressed through the National Student Survey and in focus groups and individual interviews. The views the students express shed light on the reasons why many of them find mathematics support to be an attractive resource to support their learning.

This book is a compilation of 21 papers presented at the International Cramer Symposium on Insurance Mathematics (ICSIM) held at Stockholm University in June, 2013. The book comprises selected contributions from several large research communities in modern insurance mathematics and its applications.The main topics represented in the book are modern risk theory and its applications, stochastic modelling of insurance business, new mathematical problems in life and non-life insurance and related topics in applied and financial mathematics.The book is an original and useful source of inspiration and essential reference for a broad spectrum of theoretical and applied researchers, research students and experts from the insurance business. In this way, Modern Problems in Insurance Mathematics will contribute to the development of research and academy?industry co-operation in the area of insurance mathematics and its applications.

For Wittgenstein mathematics is a human activity characterizing ways of seeing conceptual possibilities and empirical situations, proof and logical methods central to its progress. Sentences exhibit differing 'aspects', or dimensions of meaning, projecting mathematical 'realities'. Mathematics is an activity of constructing standpoints on equalities and differences of these. Wittgenstein's Later Philosophy of Mathematics (1934-1951) grew from his Early (1912-1921) and Middle (1929-33) philosophies, a dialectical path reconstructed here partly as a response to the limitative results of Gödel and Turing.

The standard treatment of the history of non-European mathematics is a product of a historiographical bias in the selection & interpretation of facts, which, as a consequence, results in ignoring, devaluing, or distorting contributions arising outside European mathematical traditions. The two Eurocentric perspectives on the historical development of mathematical knowledge are outlined with the help of diagrams, & their shortcomings examined. An alternative trajectory is proposed for the period often referred to as the Dark Ages in Europe, during which some of the seminal ideas in mathematics were being developed, refined, & transmitted across the rest of the world. The debt owed by Europe & her cultural dependencies to the Arabs is then highlighted. Possible reasons for the strength of this Eurocentric bias, even today, & its imperviousness to new evidence & sources are examined. How this bias results in a form of intellectual racism is indicated, & some of the pedagogical spinoffs for teachers of mathematics who are prepared to confront the prevailing Eurocentric view of the nature & history of mathematics are noted. 3 Figures. AA