ARTE Distribution

This series explains math, not as it is taught in school, but as a mysterious construction of the human mind that is present in our culture, our thinking and our everyday life! Discover new landscapes, exhilarating stories and great mathematicians.

Discover new landscapes, paradoxes, twists and turns, great mathematicians...and learn a few new words!

From an ecological point of view, this investigation tells us the rise of an invention of the 1990s: streaming. THE must-have technology and its exponential carbon footprint are now uncotrollable, to the point of raising the question of its survival. 

By 2025 the emissions emitted by digital technology will be almost equal to those emitted by automobiles worldwide.
To manufacture a RAM stick you need 16,000 times its weight.
To make a car you need 54 times its weight.
There is nothing as raw material intensive among all that mankind has produced as the core of the electronic components used for streaming.
Just like there was an oil shock, do we need a digital shock to make it more sustainable...?

Everyday, 6 billion emojis punctuate our virtual messages! This playful investigation into the world of emojis questions the evolution of language and the growing influence of Big Tech.

This story also enables us to decipher the modern evolution of language and the ever-present influence of Big Tech, the masters of our digital world.

Why so many small numbers? Uncover the secret of the supermarket with Benford's Law.

The starting point of this episode of our short trips in the land of math: the trivial setting of a supermarket where a vast mathematical plot seems to be unfolding. Thanks to Benford's law, we will discover two ways of measuring the world and another way of seeing things.

The Monty Hall paradox, named after a game show from the 60s, concerns the way in which information acquired during the course of a game modifies (or not) the winning statistics.

Theoretically solved, the question is so disturbing to our worldview that it continues to be the subject of passionate debate to this day.

The Game of Life allows us to understand how a complex system can emerge from something simple.

On the program of this journey: the Game of Life. A game indeed, but one that allows us to better understand how a complex system can emerge from something simpler. This is called "emergence" and the story is somewhat reminiscent of our Universe. We will also meet different profiles of mathematicians, one of whom is very playful!

Statistics seem, almost by their very nature, to convey a positivist message. They are, in fact, a formidable tool in the attempt to master the complexity of the real world...

But numerous "biases" threaten any discourse that refers to them without care: an over-simplistic reading of the figures can lead us - for example - to confuse correlation with causation... And more complex phenomena (notably Simpson's paradox) can distort conclusions that seem objective.

She fell asleep on the first train in the morning. But her neighbor tapped her shoulder to wake her up. On his phone, he said, « Can I go down on you? ». She jumps, screams, calls the ticket inspectors. The man denies everything. Nobody moves.

Written by Angela Lehner.
Avec Diane Kruger
German Original Version with English subtitles
 
Diane Kruger (Germany)
Diane Kruger is widely known thanks to several significant roles in Hollywood blockbusters: Troy, the Benjamin Gates film series or Inglourious Basterds. She regularly works with French directors: All That Divides Us by Thierry Klifa, Anything for Her by Fred Cavayé or Farewell, My Queen by Benoit Jacquot. In 2017, she won the Best Actress Award at the Cannes Film Festival for her role in In the Fade by Fatih Hakin. In 2022, she will star in the blockbuster The 355 with Jessica Chastain, Lupita Nyong'o, Penélope Cruz and Fan Bingbing.

In September 2020, the WWF announced that the Living Planet Index had fallen by 68% between 1970 and 2016. Each year, the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species grows longer.  

But how do we measure the loss of biodiversity, when around 80% of the world's living species are still unknown?

In this episode of our short trips to the land of math, we will learn that Infinity exists in several sizes.

In this episode of our short trips in the land of math, we set course for the Infinite. And even beyond, because infinity exists in several sizes. Yes, it does. Vertiginous lands where Georg Kantor and his theory of sets will give us a serious help to find our way.

For centuries, geometry was based on Euclid's postulates, which seemed eternal and irrevocable.

However, one of the postulates (the fifth) has always seemed "a little less natural" than the others, and hundreds of mathematicians have tried in vain to do without it by deducing it from the other postulates. In the mid-19th century, Bernhard Riemann came up with a novel idea: let's imagine it's false! This was the birth of "non-Euclidean geometries", which would later have major applications in physics.

It’s her first day as a receptionist at a major financial company. When it is discovered that she is wearing flat shoes, she is asked to immediately go and find herself 4 to 10 cm heels. Faced with her refusal, she is immediately fired without being paid.

Written by Alice Zeniter
With Souheila Yacoub
Original French version subtitled in English