The maths of the Olympic Games
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Maths and the Olympics
We readily imagine mathematicians as not very sporty. Yet, calculations have become central to the practice of sport, whether it is helping athletes improve their individual and collective performances, comparing results from different disciplines or building playing fields. Did you know that Big Data entered sport starting from baseball and that penalty shootouts in football can be approached using the Nash equilibrium? Have you ever imagined how to make the decathlon events or the performances of women and men commensurable? Welcome to a world of strongly built figures!
Diophantine equations
At the crossroads of arithmetic, algebra and analysis lies an illustrious unknown: Diophantus. While nothing is known of his life, the equations bearing his name have given rise to a vast body of literature linking great names such as Pythagoras, Euclid, Fermat, Bézout, Bachet de Mézirac, Lagrange, not forgetting, among so many others, Hypatia and Sophie Germain. This dossier is thus an opportunity to discover the history of Diophantine equations, to show a side of Fermat less well-known than that of his famous "Last Theorem" as well as to marvel at mathematical ingenuity through clever solutions in the form… of billiards!
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The burden of social inequality in mathematics
While gender inequalities in mathematics are now widely recognized, other forms of exclusion remain less studied: people from the working classes are also notably absent. This finding challenges the idea that mathematics is socially neutral and open to everyone, as it is often assumed to be.
Animath turns 25
On March 16 this year, the Animath association celebrated its 25th anniversary at the Institut Henri-Poincaré.
My thesis in Tangente
Geometric shapes can be associated with different pieces of music to shed light on their structure. This can be done by defining a distance between musical events using the discrete Fourier transform applied to the bars of a score.
Did you say “Myriogon”?
Myriogon is a YouTube channel run by a team of mathematics communicators: Stephen Barcelo, Chloé Bouchaour, Robin Jamet, Mickael Launay and Roger Mansuy
2024 Abel Prize awarded to French mathematician Michel Talagrand
The fifth French laureate to receive the Abel Prize, mathematics' equivalent of the Nobel Prize, Michel Talagrand was born in 1952 and spent his career at the CNRS, developing an early interest in random processes.
One Saturday a month at "Math Park"
The "Mathematic Park" series was launched by Xavier Caruso in 2003. Initially aimed at high school students but run on a fairly small scale, it moved to the Institut Henri-Poincaré (Paris, 5th arrondissement) in 2011.