“What’s that, boss?”

“I said, look at this article on a conference about how maths is applied and write something full of puns.”

“Cheesy puns?”

“Attaboy.”

Unless you’ve been living under a rocquefort the last week or so, you’ll have heard about one of Australia’s more hallouminating meetings. Every year, scientists from around the world camembert down on the Queensland University of Technology for the Maths In Industry Study Group, which applies maths to everything from traffic flow to coral reefs to STDs.

By Caerphilly applying mathematical techniques, from simple Bernoulli models to the fiendish Ricotta equations, statisticians attempt to feta model to some process from industry. ABC Science, like The Aperiodical, chooses (or cheeses) to focus on the attention-grabbing idea that maths can improve the processes in cheese maturation.

We could yargue for days about whether this is a gouda pproach, or if it cheapens the sheer emmental gymnastics required to understand cheese properly. There’s an ethical side to the debate as well: I’ve heard whispers that the reason horse-meat was able to remain undetected in cheeseburgers for so long was due to the cunning use of mascarpone.