Math for everyone
Mathematical content accessible to everyone
Percentage tennis: the maths that make you win | Tangente
Everyone talks about them, but few enthusiasts know what they really mean: probabilities play a major role in tennis, and players are best off adapting to them. Although the same issue arises in every sport, it has been studied most thoroughly in tennis.
Geometry and ball games
In ball sports, the constraints imposed by the rules have strategic implications rooted in geometry, whether the sport is team-based or individual
Tangente Trophies 2015: Full Results | Tangente
In addition to the Tangente Book Prize, two other trophies were awarded on December 9 at the Palais du Luxembourg: the Bernard Novelli Prize and the Best Article Prize.
Conjecture, conjecture... something will always come of it
Conjectures are especially famous when they have simple statements and resist mathematicians’ efforts for a long time. They give mathematics an air of mystery and bring great renown to those who solve them, but above all to those who first formulated them, such as Fermat and Goldbach.
Sports lottery and a fractal
Gambling, long condemned on religious or moral grounds, has flourished over the past century, along with sports betting, which has grown with the rise of online gaming. Statistical studies can help optimize the winnings of the homo ludens that modern humanity has become.
Of machines and men: Catalan and Mihailescu | Tangente
Little stories about conjectures.
The engine of mathematics
Mathematical progress owes much to conjectures, large and small, that challenge mathematicians. This was true long before Landon Clay and others offered million-dollar prizes: conjectures are the engine of mathematics.
Optimize athletic performance with maths | Tangente
The use of maths to optimize performance dates back to ancient Greece; today it extends to almost every discipline and is even spreading among the general public.
The central limit theorem and the laws of large numbers: so many laws!
One might expect the many independent causes behind a phenomenon to generate chaos (in the everyday, not the mathematical, sense). Nothing could be further from the truth—quite the opposite! The extreme regularity of complex phenomena has been proved to varying degrees...
Finance, medicine, justice... Mistakes, yes; mathematics, no!
The media regularly blur the distinction between mathematics as a formidable tool and the ways in which some people use it—incorrectly, ideologically or with deliberately malicious intent.
Tangente Book Prize 2015: results & winners | Tangente
The jury has delivered its verdict. It awarded the Tangente Book Prize to Vincent Borrelli and Jean-Luc Rullière, and also gave a special mention to two great ladies, Stella Baruk and Évelyne Barbin.
John von Neumann: means and excess
The Banach–Tarski paradox claims that, in theory, the pieces of a single loaf can be turned into two loaves. It fell to the protean genius John von Neumann to explain the underlying reason for this mathematical miracle. The notion of amenability that he introduced then spread widely.
Can opinion polls be trusted?
How are opinion polls conducted? What mathematical theory underpins them? What biases affect them? A survey of surveys...
Plausible conjectures… that turn out to be false!
We often assume that the only mistakes good mathematicians make are trivial slips caused by momentary inattention, such as errors in simple calculations. Yet some have put forward mathematical conjectures that proved false—sometimes spectacularly so.
Maryam Mirzakhani
Maryam Mirzakhani's recognition in Seoul in 2014 was a landmark: for the first time, mathematics' most prestigious award went to a woman—an Iranian woman, no less. Can we explain her work on surfaces to our readers? This article attempts to rise to the challenge.