THE RECOVERY OF COMPREHENSIBLE MATHEMATICS

Margherita Ting Fa Chang; Livio Clemente Piccinini; Mario Taverna; Maria Antonietta Lepellere

doi:10.17770/sie2019vol5.3737

Authors

Margherita Ting Fa Chang University of Udine (IT)
Livio Clemente Piccinini University of Udine (IT)
Mario Taverna University of Udine (IT)
Maria Antonietta Lepellere University of Udine (IT)

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.17770/sie2019vol5.3737

Keywords:

Fields Medal, Optimal Mass Transport, Linear Programming, Stepping Stones, Duality

Abstract

The main objective is to get over the gap that exists between mathematics and common people, especially grown up people. Apart mathematical details, the problem lies in a good choice of notices (curiosity) and nice problems (play). Some historical notes about great mathematicians are presented and discussed, with explicit reference to the cases when the boundary between Nobel prize and mathematics was broken. Favourable fields are probability and operations research. Since probability tends to an excess of theory, operations research seemed to be a good choice. The Fields Medal, a kind of Nobel prize for Mathematics, was also considered, since in 2018 it was achieved by the Italian mathematician Figalli, former student of Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa. He started from an important field in the frame of Operations Research, namely Optimal Transport. This sector allows to summarize a very nice procedure for its solution, non at all obvious to be trasferred to the computer. Since mathematics is forgotten in the course of life, except for those few parts of current use, to bring the adult back into the interest of mathematics, topics related to everyday life should be presented. Operations research, and especially network optimization, provide significant but pleasing problems.

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