Cave spent eleven years teaching mathematics to girls at a high school in
Clapham in south-west London and doing
computing work at home. In the years just before the
First World War, Cave worked under Professor
Karl Pearson in the
Galton Laboratory at
University College, London. In 1903, she was among six researchers, including her sister Frances, that collaborated on a large child development study led by Pearson. They worked unpaid until the
Worshipful Company of Drapers provided a grant that paid them a stipend in 1904. Cave also created correlation tables in 1917 based on a series of mice breeding experiments by
Raphael Weldon, a colleague of Pearson's at University College. Her correlation tables included tables showing amount of pigment, connecting old and new process of determining amount of pigmentation, mother and son pigmentation percentages, grandparents and offspring, and father and son amount of pigment in mice. In 1916, Cave began working for the government on airplane design. She carried out original research for the government on the mathematics of aeronautics which remained classified under the
Official Secrets Act for fifty years. She examined the effects of loads on different areas of planes during flight, and her research helped to improve aircraft stability and propeller efficiency. Cave was elected an associate fellow of the
Royal Aeronautical Society in 1919 and awarded an
MBE in 1920. She later worked as an assistant to Sir
Leonard Bairstow, the Zaharoff Professor of Aviation at
Imperial College, and she worked on fluid motion. ==Later life and death==