Welcome to the mathematics forum.

This group is designed to share knowledge, ask questions and generally ponder the topic of mathematics.

It is brought to you by Plus Magazine – the award winning online mathematics magazine.

So to start off on the introductions, we are Plus. We aim to introduce readers to the beauty and the practical applications of mathematics. Plus provides feature articles, which describe applications of maths to real-world problems, games, and puzzles; reviews of popular maths books and events; a news section, showing how recent news stories were often based on some underlying piece of maths that never made it to the newspapers; a puzzle for you to sharpen your wits against; a lucky dip of mathematical curiosities; and opinions on various maths-related topics and news stories.

We have also just started up a podcast in which we interview the world’s greatest mathematicians. We have a regular interview with someone in a maths-related career, showing the wide range of uses maths gets put to in the real world. And all past issues remain available online, which besides making for good browsing is, we hope, a useful resource for maths school students and teachers.

Plus started life under the name of PASS Maths (Public Awareness and Schools Support for Maths) in 1997, when it was a project of the Interactive Courseware Research and Development Group, based jointly at the Universities of Cambridge and Keele.

Plus is now part of the Millennium Mathematics Project, a long term national initiative based in Cambridge and active across the UK and internationally. The MMP aims to help people of all ages and abilities share in the excitement of mathematics and understand the enormous range and importance of its applications to science and commerce. It works to change people’s attitudes to maths, to act as a national focus for renewing and improving appreciation of the dynamic importance of maths and its applications, and to demonstrate the vital contribution of maths to shaping the everyday world.

Plus is co-edited by Marianne Freiberger and Marc West (Rachel Thomas is on maternity leave), with Robert Hunt as executive editor.