Warren Buffet, considered by many to be the most successful investor of the 20th century, has called derivatives financial weapons of mass destruction (see link). As a matter of fact,…
Warning! After you read this post, choosing vegetables at the supermarket will never be the same again! A few days ago while I was preparing dinner, I was peeling carrots…
As we said in the previous post, despite their many applications, all Monte Carlo methods fall roughly into three families: numerical integration, optimization, generation of probability distributions. Let's look at…
Can chance play a role in a mathematical calculation? At first glance, it seems the answer is no. We usually think that a mathematical algorithm is deterministic, so that if you…
Wavelets are a powerful mathematical tool, used in recent years in many applications. For example, wavelets play a fundamental role in defining the JPEG-2000 and MPEG-4 standards. Let's see what…
The story of the discovery of the solution formula for cubic equations is stunning. What happened gives us an interesting view of renaissance mathematics and shows us what it meant to be a mathematician in the 15th and 16th centuries. In those days,…
Sometimes mathematical formulas that only seem to be interesting from a theoretical point of view can reveal unexpected connections with some applied problem. This is the case of the "sum…
