Can we measure everything?
All folders in this issue
Can we measure everything?
Omnipresent in the most varied areas of our daily lives, measurements seem natural to us. Standards, scales, gauges… are the tools that come to mind to establish them. Situated halfway between theory and experiment, they often rely on physical models which prove to be indispensable, especially when quantities, like the radius of the Earth, are inaccessible to direct measurement. Conversely, measurements can support or invalidate a theoretical model, like the existence of the ether. Finally, how can we assign a value to qualitative notions such as intelligence, happiness or even virtue?
The Tangente Trophies
Read while cultivating your interest, or even passion, for maths, it's possible thanks to Tangente. For the twelfth edition of the Tangente Book Prize, our magazine invites you to vote for one of the ten recent books selected for their ability to transmit a taste for maths. Read, yes, but why not write? If you have a nimble pen and inventive spirit, take part in the Best Article Prize. A dream… seeing your text in Tangente soon! The Tangente Trophies also target school audiences. Discover the results of the Tangente High School Prize or encourage a young person to take part in the Bernard-Novelli Prize, a competition to create a mathematical game software.
All articles in this issue
Municipal elections: behind the scenes of the PLM Act
Do Parisian voters know that they are choosing the members of three different assemblies? Do they understand how the lucky winners are selected once the votes have been counted? In Marseille and Lyon too, the winner is not necessarily the candidate who received the most votes!
How Archimedes squared his spiral
Archimedes is admired for his great discoveries. Less well known is how his proofs unfolded. Without effective mathematical notation, reasoning was fraught with difficulty and demanded considerable ingenuity…
When game theory takes the stage
Toward the end of the Second World War, the celebrated mathematician John von Neumann and the economist Oskar Morgenstern broke new ground by providing a mathematical foundation for the strategic behavior of players and economic agents.
D'Alembert Prize goes to a festival!
Awarded every two years by the Société mathématique de France (SMF), the d'Alembert Prize recognizes an initiative designed to make mathematics better known and understood by a broad audience.
The Jacqueline Ferrand Prize goes to a Grenoble initiative
Also awarded every two years by the SMF, the Jacqueline Ferrand Prize goes to "La Grange Vadrouille/La Grange École," an initiative run by the association "La grange des maths." It recognizes an innovative mathematics education project, perfectly in keeping with the association's aims.
Karine Chemla wins the Otto Neugebauer Prize
Awarded every four years by the European Mathematical Society (EMS), the Otto Neugebauer Prize recognizes outstanding research in the history of mathematics.
The 2020 Littéramath list
Many young French people—and plenty of not-so-young ones—have a fraught relationship with mathematics. This is no secret. One way to address this, and to keep children from feeling that they are entering unfamiliar territory when they first begin learning mathematics, is to familiarize them early on with the cultural world of mathematics.