Applied mathematics
Explore mathematics articles on the theme of applied mathematics.
Breaking the ADFGVX cipher in 1914–18
For the second phase of the German spring offensives of 1918, the Germans added the letter V to the ADFGX cipher. But Georges Painvin broke the new cipher within hours… paving the way for final victory. The new system, though apparently more sophisticated, was actually weaker!
Artillery detection: trigonometry in World War I
During the Great War, artillery caused two-thirds of all casualties. Locating enemy batteries was therefore important so that counter-battery fire could silence them. Surprisingly, the search leads to an old geometry problem!
The tippe top: a mystery of mechanics
In playgrounds, the tippe top is often called a "magic top" because it flips itself over, turning upside down. Its counterintuitive behavior is subtle...
Bayes' theorem: the star of web algorithms
If the Internet can now suggest books or holiday plans to you with remarkable accuracy, it is thanks to yesterday's researchers, who envisioned computing when computers barely existed. One remarkable figure stood out, though he remains far too little known: Thomas Bayes.
Health and Big Data: AI in the fight against cancer
Big Data has many applications in medicine, from clinical practice and research to epidemiological surveillance
Big Data and insurance: the value of massive datasets
The press sometimes claims that insurers' access to ever-larger databases will soon enable them to assess each customer's risk perfectly and set a perfectly tailored premium. This new paradigm might even spell the end of insurance itself! But is that really so?
Interpreting Big Data statistics correctly
Big Data's vast resources are exploited using algorithms based on statistics and probability. This explains both the successes and failures of this technology.
Big Data: data, science's new El Dorado
People are talking about Big Data in industry, in university programs and online. Everywhere! But what does this term actually mean? It is a revolutionary technology that affects every major sector, from finance and transportation to science.
Rational behavior under risk: probability
Faced with a lottery offering two different prizes, people adopt different strategies. Why do some participants prefer a potential prize that is not the largest? Their choices depend on how each person conceives of probability—whether as a one-off event or one that will be repeated.
Mobile phones: location, networks and mathematics
A spy's dream would be for the target—the person under surveillance—to carry a microphone and a camera and be locatable. In fact, this is no longer a dream: everyone now owns a smartphone, complete with a microphone, a camera and GPS. The spy's life has become so easy…
Codebreaking in intelligence: history and methods
Throughout history, decrypting coded messages has played a major—though often overlooked—role. From the first battle won through cryptography alone to the breaking of Enigma, examples abound, but they have often been kept hidden. That remains true today.
Cryptographic machines: a history of encryption
Since antiquity, people have sought to ensure the secrecy of their correspondence through encryption. Because simple methods were easily decrypted, more sophisticated ones were invented, but they were difficult to use by hand. Machines therefore became essential.
The fascination of gears: geometry and mechanics
Gears are both objects of fascination and symbols of mechanics. Determining the shape of their teeth is a sophisticated mathematical problem. Yet this long history, which stretches back to antiquity and is still being written, remains remarkably little known!
A tour of the Museum of Machines: mathematics and mechanisms at the CNAM
Mathematics isn't visual? You can't really represent it "in the real world," let alone make it tangible? Think again! The Musée des arts et métiers (60 rue Réaumur, 75003 Paris) invites you to revisit its collections… through the surprising lens of mathematics.
Hands-on mathematics: maths at your fingertips
Mathematics can be hands-on too! Such activities will be on offer on December 3, for Tangente's 30th anniversary.
Holiday geometry | Tangente Magazine
The holidays are also a chance to uncover the mathematics all around us
Poincaré, geometry and robotics | Tangente
Mathematics, and geometry in particular, is an essential component of that most technical of fields: robotics. The concept of space, which the mathematician Henri Poincaré (1854–1912) explored in depth, lies at the heart of the robotics engineer's work.
Curva ex machina: mechanisms and curves | Tangente
Do you know Kempe's universality theorem? This 19th-century result states that any algebraic curve can be drawn by a linkage. Today, computers and robotics have replaced the ingenious mechanisms devised by scientists of the past.
Wavelets and file compression | Tangente
In March, Yves Meyer received the Abel Prize for "his pivotal role in the development of the mathematical theory of wavelets." Emerging in the early 1980s, the field quickly became indispensable to image processing. The JPEG 2000 compression standard is based on it.