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Art and Mathematics: Knots and Links
CHRISTIAN MERCAT ET MICHÈLE ARTIGUE Friezes and tilings frequently accompany the teaching of isometries. The objects that we will consider in this vignette, like the one in Figure 1, are not far from them. However, their understanding involves other mathematics: … Continue reading
Book of the month: Felix Klein – Visions for mathematics, applications and teaching
Renate Tobies is a renowned historian of mathematics and natural sciences. As a profound researcher, she has been studying Felix Klein and his works for decades. As a quintessence of these studies, she has now presented a book on Felix … Continue reading
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Book of the month: Étienne Ghys, La petite histoire des flocons de neige.
Seen up close, a snowflake reveals all sorts of splendors: a marvel of geometry and symmetry. In 1610, the great astronomer Johannes Kepler was astonished and wanted to explain why snowflakes have six branches. Etienne Ghys has in turn become … Continue reading
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Klein Concert
Maria Mannone from the University of Palermo is a theoretical physicist and a musician (composer and conductor). Her field of interest is mathematical music theory. She and her students have created music based on the Klein bottle. In May 2019 … Continue reading
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Site of the Month: 3Blue1Brown
3Blue1Brown presents animated videos about mathematics. It was created by Grant Sanderson, a graduate student from Stanford University who worked for Khan Academy. He created a YouTube-channel with videos on calculus, linear algebra, geometry, topology, and many special topics such as … Continue reading
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Developing Research in Mathematics Education
August’s book of the month is Developing Research in Mathematics Education: Twenty Years of Communication, Cooperation and Collaboration in Europe, edited by Tommy Dreyfus, Michèle Artigue, Despina Potari, Susanne Prediger, and Kenneth Ruthven. It is the first book in the … Continue reading
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How Google works: Markov chains and eigenvalues
Originating author is Christiane Rousseau. From its very beginning, Google became “the” search engine. This comes from the supremacy of its ranking algorithm: the PageRank algorithm. Indeed, with the enormous quantity of pages on the World-Wide-Web, many searches end up … Continue reading
Dimension
Originating author is Christiane Rousseau. How do we measure the size of a geometric object? For subsets of the plane we often use perimeter, length, area, diameter, etc. These are not sufficient to describe fractals. The fractal objects are very … Continue reading
Fair voting: the quest for gold
Originating authors are Gabriel Rosenberg and Mark Iwen. It is a little known fact that two gold medals were awarded for the same pairs figure skating competition in the 2002 Winter Olympics. These two medals were ultimately a result of … Continue reading
Banach’s microscope to find a fixed point
Originating author is Christiane Rousseau. In this vignette, we will show how we start from a small game to discover one of the most powerful theorems of mathematics, namely the Banach fixed point theorem. This theorem has fantastic applications inside … Continue reading