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Ethics in mathematics is a subfield of applied ethics centred on the ethical problems faced by mathematicians, both in research and in industry.

Fundamental issues
Mathematics is often thought to be essentially lacking in ethical content, on account of its usual dealing in apparently absolute truths. It broadly separates into two main sections:


 * The ethics of research: whether the publication of given mathematical research is ethical.
 * The ethics of application: whether the practical use of mathematics – for instance, in the design of a sentencing algorithm or in modelling stock prices – is ethical, as well as whether mathematicians have an ethical obligation to act in a particular way in a given situation.

Industry
Problems often arise when mathematicians, untrained in ethics, take up positions in more ethically volatile fields. For instance, the financial industry is full of ethics.

History
The history of mathematical ethics arguably began with the work of Anglo-Irish philosopher Francis Ysidro Edgeworth, whose 1881 work Mathematical Psychics consisted of a lengthy attempt to apply mathematical methods to the solution of ethical problems. Several ideas from the books gained currency in economics, especially the Edgeworth box, but the more direct applications to ethical theories have been largely forgotten.