All Squared

MathsJam is an annual conference in the UK, and a monthly night in pubs around the world, organised respectively by mathematician and juggler Colin Wright, and stand-up mathematician Matt Parker. We cornered Matt and Colin at the MathsJam conference last November, and talked to them for just over half an hour about the conference, the pub nights, and a disturbing amount about cake.

Here are some links to the things we talked about:

Evelyn Lamb is a professional mathematician who has taken up journalism on the side. She received the AAAS Mass Media Fellowship last year, and spent the summer writing for the magazine Scientific American. We talked to her about maths journalism, the challenges involved in making advances accessible to a wider audience, and the differences between blogging and print journalism.

Here are some links to go with the things we talked about:

We have an unusual All Squared podcast for you this time. My good friend David Cushing has been asking to do a podcast for absolutely ages. We couldn’t decide on a single topic to talk about, so instead I suggested we just sit down and chat about maths in general, like we do when there isn’t a microphone in front of us.

We talked for about an hour and a half, but because I’m completely stupid we lost a big chunk of it when the microphone switched off. To make things even worse, we recorded in a room with a ridiculously loud fan, so there’s that to contend with. Anyway, we talked about some fun stuff, so I think it’s worth listening to.

Here are some links relevant to the things we talked about.

This is the second and final part of our interview with Colm Mulcahy. Last week we talked about card magic; in this part we moved on to the subject of Martin Gardner and the gatherings of interesting people associated with his name.

We’ve tacked on some blather we recorded about the British Science Festival in Newcastle to the end of this podcast. Listen in to hear what we think about maths! (We’re broadly in favour of it.)

Here are some links to go with the things we talked about:

Colm’s book Mathematical Card Magic: Fifty-Two New Effects is published by CRC Press, priced £19.99/$29.95 and available from the booksellers in general.

Colm Mulcahy is an original Aperiodical contributor (Aperiodicontributor?) and friend of the site. He’s spent the last year and a bit writing his new book, Mathematical Card Magic: Fifty-Two New Effects. It came out a few weeks ago, so we thought it was a good opportunity to talk to him and find out just what’s so great about mathematical magic tricks.

Actually, we had that thought quite a while ago and if we’d been the least bit organised this podcast would’ve come out the same day as the book. As it happened, we first arranged to talk to Colm back in May, and then it took literally three months before we actually managed to record the interview.

… And then it took us three weeks to edit it up and upload it. Sorry!

Because Colm had so much interesting stuff to say, we’ve split the interview into two parts. In this first half we talk about the book and mathematical card magic; in the second part, out next week, we talk about Martin Gardner and the Celebration of Mind.

Mathematical Card Magic: Fifty-Two New Effects is published by CRC Press, priced £19.99/$29.95.

This number of the All Squared podcast contains the final third of our interview with the inestimable David Singmaster, and then a bit from CP about his favourite book, “A treatise on practical arithmetic, with book-keeping by single entry“, by William Tinwell.

The first part of the interview, and plenty of links to go with it, were in Number 5 of the podcast.

Here are some links to the things we referred to in this podcast:

Finally, here are some pictures of Christian’s favourite book, so you don’t just have to imagine what he was talking about:

We hope you enjoy listening to this two-parter. We certainly enjoyed recording it!

Good maths books are simultaneously plentiful and rare. While there are a few classics almost everyone knows about and has copies of (Gardner, Hardy, etc.), the trade in lesser-known maths books is considerably less well-organised. Very few bookshops have well-stocked maths sections, and insipid pop maths books dominate. Unless you hear about a good maths book through word of mouth, you’ll often only encounter it once it’s ended up in a second-hand bookshop, usually a refugee from an emptied maths department library.

But books, more than anything else, are where the beauty of maths really manifests itself. It’s where ideas are presented most clearly, after they’ve had time to percolate through a few more brains. We talked to David Singmaster, professor of maths and metagrobologist, about his favourite maths books.

Here are some links to the things we referred to in the podcast, along with some bonus extras:

CP recommends Westwood Books in Sedbergh and Barter Books in Alnwick as sources of unusual second-hand maths books. The chap who runs Westwood is an ex-mathematician and does a good job of saving books being thrown out of university libraries.

Part 2 will appear next week.

It’s a repeat booking for the Festival of the Spoken Nerd in number 4 (or 16 if you belong to Team All Squared) of our podcast. Standup mathematician Matt Parker joined us to talk about interesting coincidences.

Here are some links to the things we referred to in the podcast, along with some bonus extras:

Matt Parker plugged a couple of things:

Next time, which should be soon, we’ll be talking to a Fantastic Mystery Guest about our favourite maths books.

Remember, remember,

While the previous number of All Squared failed to achieve topicality by appearing several weeks after the event it was about, this time we’ve hit the nail bang on the head with a podcast all about π day… on π day!

We chatted to Festival of the Spoken Nerd’s Steve Mould about remembering π – how much can you memorise; how much should you memorise; and if you really insist on memorising it, what’s the best way to do it?

Here are some links to the things we referred to in the podcast, along with some bonus extras:

Steve Mould has his fingers in, if you’ll excuse one final pun, many pies. Here are some links to some of his projects you might find interesting:

Here’s the second edition of our new podcast, All Squared. This time we talked to Dr Andrew Taylor, PhD, about nonsense formulas in the news. In particular, since we recorded very close to pancake day, we took a close look at the various “formulas for the perfect pancake” printed in UK newspapers.

Here are some links to the things we referred to, along with some further reading. Since we found so many nonsense formula stories, I’ll split the links into two sections: nonsense and the rest.

Number 3 will appear in exactly 9 days. You can probably guess what it’ll be about. But can you guess who we’ll be talking to?

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