This More Maths Grads resource, from the Maths Careers website, investigates the maths used in transport and is based on the travelling salesman problem.

Students are given a table containing information on the cost of air travel between nine different cities and asked to plan a route that visits each...

From the Integrating Mathematical Problem Solving project by Mathematics in Education and Industry (MEI), this activity for post-16 students demonstrates that if a link is suspected between a risk factor and an illness, statistical methods can be used to test whether such a link exists. Topic areas covered are:...

In this activity, students create colour images from satellite data. This allows them to study how different surfaces reflect different wavelengths of light, how coloured images are created using an RGB model, and how band combinations can be chosen to examine a particular landscape effectively.

This activity from the Nuffield Foundation shows students how to use Kruskal’s and Prim’s algorithms to solve minimum connector problems. A cable TV company wants to lay cables to connect the towns, laying the cable along the roads shown on a map of the Isle of Wight. They want to connect all of these towns to...

From the Integrating Mathematical Problem Solving project by Mathematics in Education and Industry (MEI), this activity for post-16 students demonstrates that the acidity of a solution depends on the number of hydrogen ions per litre; the number of hydrogen ions per litre varies so much that a logarithmic scale is...

In this activity from the Nuffield Foundation students use the Chinese postman algorithm, also called the Route Inspection Problem, to solve practical problems. The College Open Day problem provides an introduction to the concept, and asks students to investigate the minimum distance someone would have to travel to...

In this resource students are required to use moving averages to investigate evidence for trends in local temperature change. There are links to the very real political and scientific debates regarding the question of climate change.

Climate Change Overview This brief overview makes...

The Nuffield Foundation provides this activity which students use to create spreadsheets that model what would happen to the temperature of the Earth if there were to be a sudden change in the amount of radiation entering or leaving the planet. Students then investigate polynomial and exponential functions to find...

The Nuffield Foundation provides this resource which shows students how, given a set of measurements along an irregular coastline, it is possible to approximate the area of land which is lost to coastal erosion over a period of time. Coastal erosion A - this activity uses the context of coastal erosion to introduce...

In this resource students deal with the problem of administering doses of a prescribed drug so that the body does not have too little or an excess of the drug. An understanding of half life is required. Students do not need to use more complicated formulae for...

This resource, from the Royal Institution, provides students with the opportunity to explore the formation of a parabola through a paper folding activity. Students follow a set of simple instructions which describe how to fold a piece of A4 paper and are asked to describe what shape is produced. The activity is...

The Nuffield Foundation provides this activity which can be used to review students' knowledge of the derivatives of quadratic and cubic functions and their graphs. The slideshow provides an introduction by considering a quadratic example and a cubic example.

In this activity students consider a population growth problem which leads to a power series. The presentation can be used to introduce the topic and use of spreadsheets would enable students to model and draw graphs of the situation.

The Nuffield Foundation provide this activity which uses graphical methods to find a suitable model to connect two sets of data. There are a variety of ways in which the data could be used, depending on the focus required. It is possible to use a log graph to find an exponential model, which is the intended focus...