My Favorite Theorem

By Kevin Knudson & Evelyn Lamb

What's My Favorite Theorem about?

Join us as we spend each episode talking with a mathematical professional about their favorite result. And since the best things in life come in pairs, find out what our guest thinks pairs best with their theorem.

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My Favorite Theorem episodes:

04.03.2024
Episode 91 - Karen Saxe
Karen Saxe is an analyst who spends her days representing mathematics on Capitol Hill. She really likes the isoperimetric inequality and its many uses. Also tennis.
01.23.2024
Episode 90 - Corrine Yap
Corrine Yap loves math, graph theory in particular, and also loves to perform her one-person play about Sonya Kovalevskaya. Also, tofu.
11.12.2023
Episode 89 - Allison Henrich
Allison Henrich studies knots and her favorite theorem is about how one might unknot a knot. Also, music.
10.09.2023
Episode 88 - Tom Edgar
We all know the (probably apocryphal) story of Gauss adding up the first 100 positive integers as a child. Well, Tom Edgar really likes this result and will be happy to tell you about dozens of different ways to prove...
09.07.2023
Episode 87 - Tatiana Toro
Tatiana Toro is a geometer and therefore loves the ur-theorem of geometry, "due" to Pythagoras. She also likes to walk.
07.20.2023
Episode 86 - Sarah Hart
Gresham Professor of Geometry Sarah Hart likes cycloids and we talk at length about all their fascinating properties. Also, Moby Dick (or The Whale).
06.02.2023
Episode 85 - Matthew Kahle
Euler's polyhedral formula continues to amaze Matthew Kahle as he finds it showing up in different places in mathematics. Also, Bach.
05.02.2023
Episode 84 - The Students of TCU
Kevin visited Texas Christian University in March and recorded this episode with some math students. Excellent theorems and pairings.
02.16.2023
Episode 83 - Cihan Bahran
Cihan Bahran has a popular twitter feed in which he shares surprising theorems. His favorite? Matrix mortality is undecidable.
12.30.2022
Episode 82 - Juliette Bruce
Juliette Bruce is an algebraic geometer who loves to think about embedding curves in projective space. Also mountaineering.
11.26.2022
Episode 81 - Christopher Danielson
Technically this is a theorem, but it seems so obvious that it's unclear that it needs a proof. In this episode Christopher Danielson points out that polygons have same number of sides as vertices. Many shapes make an appearance.
10.21.2022
Episode 80 - Kimberly Ayers
Kimberly Ayers likes dynamics and so obvs her fave theorem is Sharkovskii's result that "period 3 implies chaos." Also taffy.
09.15.2022
Episode 79 - Philip Ording
Philip Ording wrote a cool book (you should check it out) and he likes the Erlangen Program. Not really a theorem, but we're not purists around here.
08.11.2022
Episode 78 - Daina Taimina
Daina Taimina is famous for her adventures in mathematical crocheting, but her favorite theorem comes from Desargues. She also likes to travel.
07.13.2022
Episode 77 - Tien Chih
Tien Chih loves combinatorics, which means he really loves proving things by induction. In this episode we have a good time learning about this incredibly useful technique in mathematics.
06.09.2022
Episode 76 - Math Students of CSULA
We are joined by a group of math students at Cal State University in Los Angeles for a diverse collection of theorems and pairings.
03.17.2022
Episode 75 - Dave Kung
We can't believe it took 75 episodes to get to the Banach-Tarski paradox, but finally Dave Kung chose it as his favorite theorem. Also, Enigma Variations.
02.11.2022
Episode 74 - Priyam Patel
An old favorite theorem makes its third appearance on the pod, but we always like to learn new points of view. Priyam Patel likes the Brouwer Fixed Point theorem, and this time we learn how it helps classify isometries of...
01.13.2022
Episode 73 - Courtney Gibbons
Courtney Gibbons likes isomorphism theorems. All three of them, in fact, and she wants to remind you they are due to Emmy Noether, despite most textbooks ignoring that fact. Also, bunnies.
12.10.2021
Episode 72 - Kameryn Williams
Kameryn Williams is a logician and their favorite theorem is the less well-known Condensation Lemma of Gödel. Also brie.
11.11.2021
Episode 71 - Emily Howard
Composer Emily Howard uses mathematical objects and ideas as inspiration for her orchestral and chamber pieces. In this episode we talk to her about "Torus" which was inspired by work with dynamicists.
09.22.2021
Episode 70 - Joel David Hamkins
Mathematician and philosopher Joel David Hamkins likes games (whatever those are) and his favorite theorem is that winning strategies exist. This requires defining "games", "strategies", and all kinds of other stuff. Also chess.
08.14.2021
Episode 69 - Ranthony Edmonds
Mathematician Ranthony Edmonds likes factorization in general, so it's no surprise her favorite theorem is the Fundamental Theorem of Arithmetic. And some history. And mead.
07.08.2021
Episode 68 - Rekha Thomas
Mathematician Rekha Thomas likes things to have applications, and nothing fits that bill better than linear algebra. In this episode we learn that the singular value decomposition gives us a lot more information than you might have realized. Also, migratory...
06.10.2021
Episode 67 - Liz Munch
Mathematician Liz Munch really likes the duality inherent in the Max Flow-Min Cut Theorem. And harps.
05.15.2021
Episode 66 - Érika Roldán
Mathematician Érika Roldán likes probability and topology and all kinds of fun stuff. Her favorite theorem involves card shuffling, but it eventually leads to Tetris. Also 3D art.
04.08.2021
Episode 65 - Howard Masur
Howard Masur likes the Riemann Mapping Theorem, a result relating topology (simply connected subsets of the plane) and geometry (conformal mappings).
03.11.2021
Episode 64 - Pamela Harris and Aris Winger
Pamela Harris and Aris Winger have a podcast you should check out, but they also have favorite theorems as diverse as Zeckendorf's theorem about unique representations of integers as sums of Fibonacci numbers and the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus. Also...
02.11.2021
Episode 63 - Lily Khadjavi
Mathematician Lily Khadjavi does more interviewing than we do in this episode, as she proposes a taxonomy of theorems.
01.15.2021
Episode 62 - Tai-Danae Bradley
Mathematician Tai-Danae Bradley is very excited about the singular value decomposition. And category theory. And Dum Dums.
12.10.2020
Episode 61 - Yoon Ha Lee
Science fiction author Yoon Ha Lee has degrees in mathematics and it shows. We revisit an old favorite, Cantor's diagonalization argument. Also waffles.
11.12.2020
Episode 60 - Michael Barany
Historian of mathematics Michael Barany has a favorite definition, really, and it's about distributions. Also, we talk about the history of the Fields Medal and a well-thought-out pairing.
10.08.2020
Episode 59 - Daniel Litt
Daniel Litt really likes Dirichlet's theorem on primes in arithmetic progressions and it's easy to see why. But we'll let him explain. Also Holmes and Watson make an appearance.
09.10.2020
Episode 58 - Susan D'Agostino
The Jordan Curve Theorem is one of the most well-known results in mathematics and everyone thinks it's obvious. But as Susan D'Agostino points out, there are weird curves where it's not so clear. Also, poetry.
08.13.2020
Episode 57 - Annalisa Crannell
This special episode is a mashup with the Talk Math With Your Friends online seminar series and features mathematician Annalisa Crannell telling us all about Desargues' Theorem, or, as she would call it, the Fundamental Theorem of Perspective Geometry. Also,...
07.09.2020
Episode 56 - Belin Tsinnajinnie
Voting theory is on everyone's mind these days. Belin Tsinnajinnie joins us to talk about Arrow's Impossibility Theorem which asserts that the only voting system that conforms to some reasonable rules is a dictatorship by one person. Also tacos.
06.11.2020
Episode 55 - Rebecca Garcia
One of those first weird facts you learn in real analysis is that the rational numbers are dense in the reals. And then you learn later that they're measure zero. Our guest, Rebecca Garcia, says this still kind of blows...
05.14.2020
Episode 54 - Steve Strogatz
Steve Strogatz is famous for his work in dynamical systems, but his favorite theorem is due to Cauchy. A classic of complex analysis, it asserts that the integral of an analytic function around a closed contour is zero; one of...
04.09.2020
Episode 53 - Ruthi Hortsch
Ruthi Hortsch has a very cool job working with middle school math students, but she's also a number theorist who really likes Faltings's Theorem. Also bagels.
03.12.2020
Episode 52 - Ben Orlin
Ben Orlin is famous for his bad drawings. In this episode he tells us about Weierstrass's ultimate bad drawing--a continuous function that is nowhere differentiable.
02.13.2020
Episode 51 - Carina Curto
Mathematician Carina Curto really likes the Perron-Frobenius Theorem. Listen to find out why this simple-sounding result is so important and useful.
01.09.2020
Episode 50 - aBa
aBa took a circuitous path to becoming a math professor. His favorite theorem is a number theory fact he figured out on the bus one day and it changed the course of his life.
12.12.2019
Episode 49 - Edmund Harriss
Mathematician and artist Edmund Harriss thinks about geometry. A lot. And that means considering the Gauss-Bonnet Theorem and how it manifests in the real world.
11.14.2019
Episode 48 - Sophie Carr
Bayes's Theorem: love it or hate it you can't deny that it's a useful tool in probability. Join this year's most interesting mathematician Sophie Carr to find out why she loves this theorem so much.
10.10.2019
Episode 47 - Judy Walker
Judy Walker loves coding theory and tells us all about her favorite ones in this episode. Elliptic curves FTW!
09.12.2019
Episode 46 - Adriana Salerno
Adriana Salerno loves one of the most famous arguments in mathematics--Cantor's Diagonalization Argument. We couldn't agree more (although we certainly agree plenty in the episode).
08.08.2019
Episode 45 - Your Flash Favorite Theorems
At the 2019 Joint Mathematics Meetings in Baltimore, Kevin and Evelyn asked lots of folks to tell us about their favorite results, and do it in a hurry. The pairings, thought of on the fly, do not disappoint.
07.11.2019
Episode 44 - James Propp
In this episode James Propp challenges the obvious notion that things that don't change must be constant. Indeed, it would be an odd universe in which this were not true, but it very much depends upon, and is in fact...
06.13.2019
Episode 43 - Matilde Lalin
Number theorist Matilde Lalin introduces us to the Congruent Number Problem: which integers can occur as the area of a right triangle with rational sides? This turns out to have deep connections to elliptic curves and the Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer...
05.09.2019
Episode 42 - Moon Duchin
Geometer Moon Duchin shares her favorite result, a wild generalization of the classical isoperimetric inequality to the landscape of infinite groups. Also politics and gerrymandering, of course.

What's My Favorite Theorem about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

My Favorite Theorem episodes:

Episode 91 - Karen Saxe

Episode 90 - Corrine Yap

Episode 89 - Allison Henrich

Episode 88 - Tom Edgar

Episode 87 - Tatiana Toro

Episode 86 - Sarah Hart

Episode 85 - Matthew Kahle

Episode 84 - The Students of TCU

Episode 83 - Cihan Bahran

Episode 82 - Juliette Bruce

Episode 81 - Christopher Danielson

Episode 80 - Kimberly Ayers

Episode 79 - Philip Ording

Episode 78 - Daina Taimina

Episode 77 - Tien Chih

Episode 76 - Math Students of CSULA

Episode 75 - Dave Kung

Episode 74 - Priyam Patel

Episode 73 - Courtney Gibbons

Episode 72 - Kameryn Williams

Episode 71 - Emily Howard

Episode 70 - Joel David Hamkins

Episode 69 - Ranthony Edmonds

Episode 68 - Rekha Thomas

Episode 67 - Liz Munch

Episode 66 - Érika Roldán

Episode 65 - Howard Masur

Episode 64 - Pamela Harris and Aris Winger

Episode 63 - Lily Khadjavi

Episode 62 - Tai-Danae Bradley

Episode 61 - Yoon Ha Lee

Episode 60 - Michael Barany

Episode 59 - Daniel Litt

Episode 58 - Susan D'Agostino

Episode 57 - Annalisa Crannell

Episode 56 - Belin Tsinnajinnie

Episode 55 - Rebecca Garcia

Episode 54 - Steve Strogatz

Episode 53 - Ruthi Hortsch

Episode 52 - Ben Orlin

Episode 51 - Carina Curto

Episode 50 - aBa

Episode 49 - Edmund Harriss

Episode 48 - Sophie Carr

Episode 47 - Judy Walker

Episode 46 - Adriana Salerno

Episode 45 - Your Flash Favorite Theorems

Episode 44 - James Propp

Episode 43 - Matilde Lalin

Episode 42 - Moon Duchin