1, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, 19, 23... Le Saint Graal de tout mathématicien qui se respecte : trouver la formule qui permettrait de prédire le prochain nombre premier. Marcus du Sautoy appréhende cette quête séculaire en détective : sa Symphonie des nombres premiers se lit comme un polar.

An award-winning mathematician and Oxford professor looks to the arts to uncover the key mathematical structures that underpin both nature and human creativity.

Many of the artists that we encounter are completely unaware of the mathematics that bubble beneath their craft, while some consciously use it for inspiration. Our instincts might tell us that these two subjects are incompatible forces with nothing in common - mathematics being the realm of precise logic and art being the realm of emotion and aesthetics - but what if we''re wrong?
Blueprints asks us to consider that mathematics and art may not be polar opposites after all. Their complementary relationship spans a vast historical and geographic landscape, from the earliest stone circles to Mozart''s obsession with numbers and the radically modern architecture of Zaha Hadid. Whether we are searching for meaning in an abstract painting or finding patterns in poetry, there are blueprints everywhere: symmetry, prime numbers, the golden ratio and more.
In this bold and philosophical exploration of human creativity, Marcus du Sautoy unpacks how we make art, why a creative mindset is vital for discovering new mathematics, and how a fundamental connection to the natural world intrinsically links these two subjects. Lire la suite Fermer

Why do some games seem to be universal while others have a particular connection to the culture of the people playing them?
Around the World in 80 Games is about the mathematics of chance, game theory, gamification, gaming strategies and computer games. Traversing the globe, Marcus du Sautoy looks at the genesis of games new and old, explores how to invent a good game and explains the fascination of a popular lockdown game.
The most simple games endure: board games, card games and dice games have captivated us for centuries and the acclaimed mathematician and author of The Creativity Code (among many others) will once again bring mathematics to the fore with insight and aplomb in Around the World in 80 Games. Lire la suite Fermer

Thinking Better is a celebration of the art of the short cut - and an encouragement to all of us, in our lives and maybe particularly in our business lives, to realise that thinking better is often more successful than working faster . A new invention is often born of someone who can''t be bothered to do things the hard way. Laziness doesn''t mean that you do nothing; often it means you prefer to play rather than work. But play is frequently the place to foster creativity and new ideas rather than the dull mechanistic world of work - it''s one of the reasons that the offices of start-ups are often filled will pool tables and board games as much as desks and computers. There is evidence that humans working in conjunction with computers, literally working as a team, can achieve more than computers can achieve on their own. We may not be able to rely on computers to solve all of our problems - whether personal, or business, or even on a planetary level - but Thinking Better explores how together we just might be able build a successful future together.
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Will a computer ever compose a symphony, write a prize-winning novel, or paint a masterpiece? And if so, would we be able to tell the difference? As humans, we have an extraordinary ability to create works of art that elevate, expand and transform what it means to be alive. Yet in many other areas, new developments in AI are shaking up the status quo, as we find out how many of the tasks humans engage in can be done equally well, if not better, by machines. But can machines be creative? Will they soon be able to learn from the art that moves us, and understand what distinguishes it from the mundane? In The Creativity Code , Marcus du Sautoy examines the nature of creativity, as well as providing an essential guide into how algorithms work, and the mathematical rules underpinning them. He asks how much of our emotional response to art is a product of our brains reacting to pattern and structure, and exactly what it is to be creative in mathematics, art, language and music. Marcus finds out how long it might be before machines come up with something creative, and whether they might jolt us into being more imaginative in turn. The result is a fascinating and very different exploration into both AI and the essence of what it means to be human.
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@2@@20@Do something amazing and learn a new skill thanks to the Little Ways to Live a Big Life books! @21@@3@@2@Birds do it, bees do it, even educated fleas do it... Not falling in love, but counting. Animals and humans have been using numbers to navigate their way through the jungle of life ever since we all evolved on this planet. But this book will help you to do something that humans have only recently understood how to do: to count to regions that no animal has ever reached. By the end of this book you'll be able to count to infinity...and beyond.@16@On our way to infinity we'll discover how the ancient Babylonians used their bodies to count to 60 (which gave us 60 minutes in the hour), how the number zero was only discovered in the 7th century by Indian mathematicians contemplating the void, why in China going into the red meant your numbers had gone negative and why numbers might be our best language for communicating with alien life.@16@But for millennia contemplating infinity has sent even the greatest minds into a spin. Then at the end of the nineteenth century mathematicians discovered a way to think about infinity that revealed that it is a number that we can count. Not only that. They found that there are an infinite number of infinities, some bigger than others. Just using the finite neurons in your brain and the finite pages in this book, you'll have your mind blown discovering the secret of how to count to infinity.@3@ Lire la suite Fermer