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The numbers game

Nature volume 412, pages 4–5 (2001)Cite this article

Mathematicians are in short supply in the United States. Potter Wickware examines how the federal agencies plan to boost the numbers.

Strangely, the decline in interest comes just as a rich crop of theoretical and applied problems is bursting into bloom. Opportunities are abundant in cryptography, data mining, nanosystems, communications networks, materials and imaging. Physics continues to exert a strong influence on maths, with string theory revealing connections between algebraic and differential geometry. And as biology moves from a descriptive to a quantitative science, an entirely new frontier is opening up, both in physiological modelling and in new imaging systems (see “Biostatistics booms”).

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  1. Potter Wickware is a science writer in San Francisco.

    • Potter Wickware
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  1. Potter Wickware
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Wickware, P. The numbers game. Nature 412, 4–5 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1038/35091267

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