Maths in the Pub
Knots, ties, belts, poems and marbles were some of the prompts used by our MSI staff to illustrate the complexity of mathematics at Tuesday’s ‘Maths in the Pub’, hosted by science communicator Dr Phil Dooley and sponsored by Inspiring Australia and ANU Mathematical Sciences Institute.
The evening started with one of Phil’s musical numbers, a song called “what about maths”, and then proceeded with Joan Licata's presentation on knot theory, followed by Peter Price exercise on how many ways you can tie a tie and Asilata Bapat’s interactive talk on the maths behind hanging a picture on a wall.
After a short break, we continued with Ivo Vekeman’s introduction to algebraic topology and a poem about infinite loops; and concluded with Mark Bugden’s mind-boggling talk on 10-dimensional boxes and how many marbles you could potentially fit in them (can you guess how many?)
It was a fantastic night filled with music, laughs and of course, maths.