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Category Archives: English
Accromath
November’s site of the month: Accromath This is the site of a French-Canadian journal aimed at a mathematics teacher audience. Now in its 10th volume, the journal has articles in French that can be read online or download as pdf.
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The Laboratory of Mathematical Instruments
October’s site of the month: The Laboratory of Mathematical Instruments October’s book of the month: Bartolini Bussi, Maria G., Maschietto, Michela (2006). Macchine Matematiche. Springer Japanese Translation: Kyokusen no jiten : seishitsu rekishi sakuzuhoÌ, Tankoban Hardcover A mathematics teacher coming … Continue reading
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Trading in a Town
Originating authors are Alberto A. Pintoa (University of Porto, cLIAAD-INESC Porto LA) and Telmo Parreira (University of Minho, cLIAAD-INESC Porto LA). Have you ever been frustrated by the lack of choices when you go to buy something? Why do producers … Continue reading
Proofs From The Book
April’s Book of the Month is Proofs From The Book by Martin Aigner and Günter Zeigler. (The first edition came out in 1998 — note the new editions) From the preface to the first edition. Paul Erdös liked to talk … 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
Goodstein Sequences: The Power of a Detour via Infinity
Originating authors are Michèle Artigue, Ferdinando Arzarello and Susanna Epp. Studying the evolution of a natural phenomenon often leads to studying numerical sequences , especially their long-term behavior and whether they eventually converge. Polynomial, exponential, and logarithmic sequences are frequently … Continue reading
Matrices and Digital Images
Originating authors are Dirce Uesu Pesco and Humberto José Bortolossi. The images you see on internet pages and the photos you take with your mobile phone are examples of digital images. It is possible to represent this kind of image … 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