Studying mathematics

You will use mathematics to solve a wide range of problems and have the opportunity to master standard software used in industry.

Our Maths Lab is a dedicated space for students to solve problems, practise presentations and talk about mathematics

This research-led mathematics degree equips you with a solid base in pure and applied mathematics.

Through optional modules, you can gain additional expertise in operational research (the mathematics of industrial decision making), probability, data analysis and statistics, and theoretical physics. You will solve large scale problems on computers using programming languages such as Python and R. The degree is underpinned by proof which gives you a deep understanding of the results you use.

The course is taught by world leading researchers who develop and regularly revise our wide range of final year options which extends from theoretical physics and fluid mechanics to financial mathematical modelling and pure mathematics. This degree equips you with high-level skills which employers value. This gives you excellent career prospects as well as the possibility to progress to a research degree.

We are very proud of the support we offer and we place an emphasis on developing your oral and written professional communications skills. This greatly enhances your employability. Our optional placement year is a great way to gain commercial experience and opens doors into good jobs.

Choosing my dissertation topic

“I decided to write my dissertation on the cardinality-constrained mean-variance portfolio optimisation problem. This problem interested me because it is one of the most important problems to solve in order for an investor to manage their portfolios efficiently.”

Mohammad Tahir discusses how he chose a research topic for his dissertation, the process of working on it and how it has helped with his future

Projects

Our degrees feature a variety of final year project modules. Recent project topics include:

Vigenere Ciphers and Perfect Secrecy
Flow of Newtonian Fluids
Finance and the Black-Scholes Equation
Tornados and Atmospheric Vorticity
Elliptic Curve Cryptography with the Basis of the Diffie-Hellman Key Exchange
Symmetry Groups and the Quark Model
Fractals and the Chaos Game
Analytical and Numerical Solutions of European and Asian Options
The Banach-Tarski Paradox

Our degrees feature a variety of final year project modules.

This is an invaluable opportunity to work with a world class researcher on a project of your choosing and study a topic in depth. This also gives students something to show at job interviews and can be an excellent preparation for postgraduate study.

Assessment

During this degree we use a variety of assessment methods depending upon the material being taught. This includes both individual and group coursework, in-class tests, computer practicals, projects and reports (including, for example, a first year essay on the social and ethical implications of the mathematics underlying cryptography). Some first year coursework is also designed to get you talking with other students in the course about mathematics.