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Beyond his editorial work for Tangente, where authors are urged to "keep it short without giving a lecture", this conviction also led him to pursue various projects combining mathematics and literature. These include the "Lewis Carroll" literary games competition, held alongside the International Mathematical Games Championship; the many book reviews—nearly 600—made freely available on tangente-mag.com ; support, via Club Tangente, for the creation and organization of the Tangente Book Prize (see "The 2023 Tangente Awards winners") and its younger sibling, the Tangente High School Students' Book Prize. He also launched the Littéramath project (**litteramath.fr**), which aims to bring books about mathematics to the attention of schools and the general public.
"I remember Gilles's profound admiration for the work of the Comte de Lautréamont (Isidore Ducasse): Les Chants de Maldoror. He could recite from memory the second canto, which begins: "O austere mathematics, I have not forgotten you." " (Alain Zalmanski)
Gilles also wrote the piece on Lautréamont published in 2006 in the anthology Mathématiques et Littérature, part of the Bibliothèque Tangente series (issue 28), which was reissued in full in 2022.
A miracle of love
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"The so-called rankings of schools all have one thing in common: they confuse cause and effect. Attending Machin-le-Grand High School will not give you a better chance of success than attending Truc-le-Petit High School; Machin-le-Grand gets better results because its students are stronger (admission is more selective). Here is a story showing just how artificial measures of average attainment can be.
Chose-le-Moyen High School takes pride in its place in Group II of the AB's (Argus des Bahuts) "real-time" rankings, which record the grades of every final-year high school student in France day by day. Its students' average is 13.98. There is just one cloud on the horizon: it has not reached the score of 14 that would put it in Group I.
Four hundred meters away, Truc-le-Petit High School, with its average of 9.99, has nothing to celebrate. Its Group IV ranking means that it takes only the students no one else wants. If only its score could reach 10, it would move into Group III, significantly improving its standing!
This is where Pascaline comes in. A final-year student at Chose-le-Moyen High School, she is reasonably capable, with grades hovering around 12. She falls for a handsome dunce who idles away his days at Truc-le-Petit High School. Determined to follow her beloved to the ends of the earth, she does not hesitate to cross the four hundred meters separating the two schools—and the miles separating their reputations.
Then the miracle happens! Relieved of a student whose grade was below its overall average, Chose-le-Moyen High School crosses the 14-point threshold and moves into Group I! Bolstered by a student whose grade is above its average, Truc-le-Petit High School moves into Group III!
Do you think Pascaline's transfer increased the students' chances of success at either school?"
