Sur les blogs — les derniers billets des blogs de mathématiques

Tangente est le seul magazine français destiné au grand public, dédié entièrement aux mathématiques. Il s'agit d'un bimestriel, six numéros par an et quatre numéros hors série. Chacun des numéros hors séries devient un numéro spécial un peu plus tard, la Bibliothèque Tangente qui propose une version plus fouillée, un...

Ben Krause, Hamed Mousavi, Joni Teräiväinen, and I have just uploaded to the arXiv our paper Quantitative bounds for sets lacking polynomial progressions with shifted prime difference. The purpose of this paper is to obtain quantitative versions of this theorem of Wooley and Ziegler: Theorem 1 Let be polynomials of...

In everyday European discourse there are only a small number of scientists whose names are widely known within the general populus–Copernicus, Galileo, Descartes, Newton, Darwin, Einstein, Curie–and even then the people only know very vaguely why these scientists are celebrated ... Continue reading →

This looks like a Rubik's Cube, but it's not: It seems that an open-cab truck filled to the brim with Rubik's Cubes hit a bump in the road, causing some of the cubes to spill out of the truck bed and onto the roadway. When, mere moments later, those cubes got run over by a [...]

Double Maths First Thing gets its kicks on a.19792ish Hello! My name is Colin and I am a mathematician on a mission to spread the joy and love in doing maths, figuring stuff out, getting stuck and getting unstuck again. You'll need to forgive a slightly brief end-of-summer DMFT; it's the sort of week where...

In recent months there has been a proliferation of AI-generated proofs of various old and new results, some of which have been formalized in the proof assistant language Lean. However, checking that a given Lean repository actually proves the claimed statement is somewhat non-trivial, especially for an audience which...

Ces cahiers proposent, pour chaque niveau, une sélection organisée d'exercices d'automatismes tirés de la plateforme MathALÉA. Chaque exercice est associé à un QR code : sur cette version num...

In this series of posts, we'll be featuring mathematical video and streaming channels from all over the internet, by speaking to the creators of the channel and asking them about what they do. We spoke to Ellie Sleightholm about her YouTube channel, on which she posts roughly once a week to share the beauty in...

In the last post in this series, I talked about the rapid expansion  in the availability and use of mathematical and scientific instruments in England in the Early Modern Period. After describing the areas where these new instruments came into use, ... Continue reading →

This post concerns the following conjecture of Sendov, as well as its strengthening by Phelps–Rodriguez: Conjecture 1 (Sendov's conjecture) Let , and let be a degree polynomial with all zeroes in the unit disk. Then for every zero of , there exists a critical point of with . Conjecture 2 (Phelps–Rodriguez conjecture)...

L'entrée en prépa scientifique, CPGE ou prépa intégrée, constitue un véritable changement de rythme et de méthode. Or, les différences entre les lycées d'origine peuvent être importantes : certains élèves ont déjà été un tant soit peu familiarisés avec...

Double Maths First Thing has an army of clones Hello! My name is Colin and I am a mathematician on a mission to spread the joy and delight of working things out. I had a delightful chat with young Bill about complex numbers and matrices and noticed that the difference between him and most of...

A function of one variable can be translated in space by a spatial shift to obtain a new function and also modulated in frequency by a frequency shift to obtain a new function One can compose these two operations to obtain a time-frequency shift: As per the time-frequency uncertainty principle, the two shifts do not...

This is the first in a series of prompts for art intertwined with math. Jump in and choose your medium to indulge in creative expression. Warm-upGrab a sheet of paper and a ruler. Make a line with 16 marks evenly spaced from the top to the bottom of

Double Maths First Thing is square in hex AND decimal! Hello! My name is Colin and I am a mathematician on a mission to share the joy and love in mathematics, to show that it's more than the mindless memorisation of arbitrary rules. Guess who nearly got sucked into a 6 ÷ 2 × 3...

Ethan Siegel is a big hitter under the Internet science explainers and popularisers, under the brand, Starts with a Bang. This started many years ago as a blog and has now been part of the Big Think website for many years. His style ... Continue reading →

The next issue of the Carnival of Mathematics, rounding up blog posts from the months of June and July 2026, is now online courtesy of Robin Whitty at Theorem of the Day. The Carnival rounds up maths blog posts from all over the internet, including some from our own Aperiodical. See our Carnival of Mathematics page...

Here's a short round-up of maths news from this month. The 2026 Fields medals have been awarded to Yu Deng, John Pardon, Jacob Tsimerman and Hong Wang. The Fields Medal is awarded to recognize outstanding mathematical achievement for existing work and for the promise of future achievement, and this year's winners work...

Jumping straight to the model might make us miss something interesting... What Makes a Plot Interesting? Prediction Edition Sara Stoudt Bucknell University How do you go about finding something "interesting" in a new dataset? I recommend taking the time to explore. This exploration process requires actually looking at...

I would like to start this post with a thank you to members of this site for making both this blog and inquiries.link more sustainable. I've been asked about some of the toys I've made for interactive math play. I implement them on a site

According to legend the Pythagoreans were devastated when they discovered that the diagonal of a unit square is an irrational number, because they believed that the natural numbers were the building bricks of the cosmos. It is even said that ... Continue reading →

Double Maths First Thing is somewhat ready to rock Hello! My name is Colin and I am a mathematician on a mission to spread the joy and love in mathematics, the pleasure of puzzling things out and getting people to notice the sense of satisfaction that comes from everything clicking into place at once. I've...

In this series of posts, we'll be featuring mathematical video and streaming channels from all over the internet, by speaking to the creators of the channel and asking them about what they do. We spoke to Kala, who has an Instagram channel called MathsWithKala. What is your channel about, and when/why did it start?...

I make no secret of the fact that I think Johannes Kepler was a far more significant scientist at the beginning of the seventeenth century than Galileo Galilei and that he contributed far more to the development of modern science ... Continue reading →

Etre professeur principal, ce n'est pas seulement préparer quelques heures de vie de classe ou remplir les appréciations à la fin du trimestre. C'est suivre une classe entière, préparer les rendez-vous avec les familles, conserver les informations importantes, retrouver les bulletins, rédiger des comptes rendus, noter...

Double Maths First Thing doesn't fear the REAPER Hello! My name is Colin and I am a mathematician on a mission to spread mathematical joy and surprise. This week is full of leavers' assemblies and general end-of-term commitments, so you'll forgive me for keeping it brief. Links Let's start at EMF, which (for various...

The notorious Jacobian conjecture can be formulated concretely over the complex numbers as follows. Conjecture 1 (Jacobian Conjecture) Let be a polynomial map in complex variables, whose Jacobian is a non-zero constant. Then is invertible (with polynomial inverse). The condition that the Jacobian is non-zero is...

Base two numerals can be awkward to compute with, and Roman numerals are even more awkward. But awkward is not the same as bad. Today I'll tell you about a truly awful numeral system—possibly the very worst ever proposed as a way of doing arithmetic—but I claim that even such an abominable system is useful [...]

Les sujets des épreuves écrites des CRPE 2026 (bac +3 et bac+5) sont disponibles ici: https://www.devenirenseignant.gouv.fr/les-sujets-des-epreuves-ecrites-et-rapports-des-jurys-des-crpe-1163 Remarque : Pour des propositions de corrigés (non officiels)...

I believe that the creation of visualization apps to illustrate mathematical or scientific concepts is a particularly favorable use case for modern coding agents, as many of the downside risks attached to other LLM use cases are limited: I would however caution against unrestricted LLM use when one or more of the...

Double Maths First Thing has an open mic spreadsheet Hello! My name is Colin and I am a mathematician on a mission to spread mathematical joy and delight in figuring stuff out. I did some lovely science last week, full on hypothesis-experiment-eureka! and an immediate improvement in my client's model. It was either...

In the previous episode I presented what I have always taken to be Euclid's proof that there is no greatest prime number, an elegant reduction ad absurdum proof. Over the decades, I must have seen it present as such in ... Continue reading →

One byproduct of learning how to use coding agents to create visualization apps is that it now becomes straightforward to convert any figure in one's papers that had already been generated by code (e.g., in Python) into a more interactive, animated applet. I can illustrate this with Figure 1 from my recent paper on...

(I am writing here in my capacity as Director of Special Projects at IPAM.) IPAM seeks program proposals from the mathematical, statistical, and scientific communities for long programs, workshops, and summer schools.  Most program proposals are reviewed at IPAM's Science Advisory Board meeting, held in November each...

I am finding the newly revealed capability to code old applet ideas into reality to be very tempting to sink more time into, though I am certainly encountering the common "vibe coding" experience that the process can produce something that superficially resembles a finished product well before a satisfactory level of...

après une attaque sur mon compte X, j'ai récupéré la plupart des photos que j'y avais mises. Pendant un temps, c'était un moyen de partager les bricolages avec une photo et très peu de mots. J'aimais bien ce format, mais rien ne m'empeche de reprendre le blog avec cette formule. Donc, ces jours, ci , j'ai réussi à...

Bonjour à toutes et tous. Une petite réflexion sur l'IA et l'impact sur notre métier. Cette réflexion, elle m'est venue d'un échange avec Ju' et aussi d'une réflexion de Philippe Meirieu lors de sa conférence à Lyon en avril dernier. L'IA est donc présente dans notre métier, d'ailleurs l'état français a muni tous ses...

The concept of infinity lies at the heart of calculus, the infinitely large and the infinitely small, also known as the infinitesimal. In fact, in the early days of calculus, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, it was known ... Continue reading →

Dans le cadre de ses projets d'accompagnement à la parentalité et d'actions en faveur des parents de jeunes enfants en situation de précarité, le Secours Populaire du Haut-Rhin est à la recherche de vêtements pour bébés (0-3 ans). Lieux de dépôts possibles...

La liste complète des textes réglementaires applicables, et notamment les décrets statutaires, figure en annexe 1. Les dispositions de la présente note sont applicables aux lauréats des concou...

Alors que les effets de la surconsommation d'écrans sur la capacité d'attention et de concentration des jeunes et sur la construction de leur esprit critique sont largement établis, la régulati...

When somebody wants to dispute something that I say about the history of science or the history of mathematics on social media and can't actually refute it with facts, they often resort to a comment like the one that is ... Continue reading →

This is not obviously a difficult problem. But in over two hundred years since Carl Friedrich Gauss first posed it, there has been remarkably little progress... Another Look at Circles and Squares Bill Casselman University of British Columbia Another look at circles and squares One of the most intriguing unsolved

Math is wonderful, and there are so many different ways to play and experience it. I enjoy having conversations with other math lovers and sharing ideas, puzzles, pedagogy, and questions. In one of these conversations with Dr. Maria at Natural Math, I learned about a book called Modultown by Drs.

Bonjour à toutes et tous! Oui, c'est bigrement la galère chez nous, on revoit la répartition et mon programme a pu aider, mais parfois mes collègues voulaient des contraintes personnalisées. J'ai donc ajouté cela dans le programme. Voici un exemple ci-dessous: Les programmes sont là : Windows :...

Bonjour à toutes et tous ! Geodyn (qui était disponible sur mathablette.fr (qui a fermé), c'est tout d'abord un outil de construction de géométrie, pas dynamique car les points sont fixes, mais on peut animer la construction avec les outil et pour montrer les constructions c'est vraiment top! Là, j'ai conçu une option...

Anybody who has been following this series will be aware that in England in the Early Modern Period, mathematical and scientific instruments played a central role in the world of practical mathematics. As we have seen from small beginnings in ... Continue reading →

Bonjour à toutes et tous! Bon, notre dotation horaire s'est amusé à faire Philippe Catherine , « j'enlève une classe » « Ohhhh » « je remets une classe » « ahhhh » mais avec sans doute des contraintes d'heures des dédoublements plus possible et donc .... une répartition à revoir là maintenant. Ni une ni deux, je n'ai...

Bonjour à toutes et tous! J'ai remis un petit lifting sur l'outil suivi de mathix.org. voici donc une présentation de l'interface enseignant et élève? J'ai également ajouté quelques exerciseurs. (enfin plutôt une adaptation par niveau) Disponible sur la forge https://roverbot.forge.apps.education.fr Disponible sur la...

IntroductionIn this inquiry, we build a sequence from a single 2. The first rule of this sequence is that it has to describe itself.Starting with TwoHere is a 2. 2It says, "There are two here." The first number is a 2, so the next

Bonjour à toutes et tous ! Voilà le 9 juin, le projet aboutissait à une gigantesque fresque de 84 carrés avec des motifs géométriques sur la route menant au collège (barrée par la mairie pour l'occasion) D'ailleurs Ouest-France titrait « Dans une rue de Loué, près de 200 élèves ont dessiné une grande fresque dédiée...

Bonjour, Voici une application rapidement codée, plutôt vibecodée. Je voulais d'une part tester rapidement et voir comment on pouvait faire un programme, long et structuré. Comme tout programme vibecodé, le code a un certain style qui ne nous correspond pas, et donc réanalyser les choix de l'IA est plus complexe. Donc...

Évaluations exhaustives de début de sixième, de cinquième et de quatrième 2025 en français et en mathématiques https://www.education.gouv.fr/depp/evaluations-exhaustives-de-debut-de-sixieme-de-cinquieme-et-de-quatrieme-2025-en-francais-et-en-504998 Test...

Ecarts genrés, difficultés dans la résolution de problèmes... Que retenir de la énième note d'information à propos des évaluations nationales ? Avec ces évaluations normées du CP au CM2, les

"Oh, it's just a trick thing." – Ben Ames Williams, Coconuts Here are six puzzles, some of them classics, that don't look much alike on the surface. After stating them, I'll give a hint about what they have in common. Then I'll present solutions that all make use of the same slick trick in one [...]

Bonjour à toutes et tous ! En ces temps d'examens, TF1 nous propose un petit reportage sur le bac sans calculatrice. A fin de clore le reportage un petit problème est posé et sa solution est donnée, enfin sa solution... la solution du journaliste qui lui aurait peut-être loupé le bac... Je crois que je [...]

La vidéo du jour fait suite à celle que j'avais publiée il y a quelques temps sur les principes de la fusion nucléaire. Cette fois on s'intéresse au fonctionnement des tokamaks, au confinement magnétique, et aux défis que posent le contrôle de ces machines extraordinaires. Parmi les choses dont j'aurai aimé parler un...

The Renaissance Mathematicus has completed yet another orbit around the Sun and is, as of today, seventeen years old. Seventeen years of churning out history of science blog posts to keep myself occupied and hopefully entertain and maybe inform the ... Continue reading →