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149 votes
21 answers
21k views
+50

How does one justify funding for mathematics research?

G. H. Hardy's A Mathematician's Apology provides an answer as to why one would do mathematics, but I'm unable to find an answer as to why mathematics deserves public funding. Mathematics can be ...
120 votes
33 answers
15k views

Examples of theorems misapplied to non-mathematical contexts

For something I'm writing -- I'm interested in examples of bad arguments which involve the application of mathematical theorems in non-mathematical contexts. E.G. folks who make theological arguments ...
78 votes
9 answers
9k views

Mathematical conjectures on which applications depend

What are some examples of mathematical conjectures that applied mathematicians assume to be true in applications, despite it being unknown whether or not they are true?
40 votes
17 answers
10k views

Interesting mathematical topics arising from biology

I've heard that there's a relatively new field of science called mathematical biology. It will certainly apply well known and less known mathematical techniques to the understanding of some biological ...
37 votes
17 answers
13k views

Listing applications of the SVD

The SVD (singular value decomposition) is taught in many linear algebra courses. It's taken for granted that it's important. I have helped teach a linear algebra course before, and I feel like I need ...
35 votes
26 answers
5k views

Examples of mathematics motivated by technological considerations

I would like examples of technological advances that were made possible only by the creation of new mathematics. I'm talking about technology that was desired in some period of history but for which ...
29 votes
20 answers
8k views

Mathematics and cancer research

What are applications of mathematics in cancer research? Unfortunately, I heard quite little about applications of mathematics, but I heard something about applications of physics, and let me put this ...
28 votes
1 answer
2k views

Recent uses of applied mathematics in pure mathematics

In this answer Yves de Cornulier mentioned a talk about the possible uses of persistent homology in geometric topology and group theory. Persistent homology is a tool from the area of topological data ...
20 votes
5 answers
2k views

Examples of research on how people perceive mathematical objects

What examples are there on research related to human perception and mathematical objects? For example, the shape of a beer glass influences drinking habits, since people are bad at integrating. ...
Per Alexandersson's user avatar
1 vote
0 answers
245 views

Research-level blogs on complex networks:

I'm an applied mathematician that has a research interest in complex networks for modelling biological systems and I wondered whether the MathOverflow community might know of research-level blogs that ...