Past lectures

A look at the history of early mathematics, where fundamental...

Proofs are important not just for developing critical reasoning, and...

Imagine that interstellar trade is possible at speeds close to the speed of light. It must incorporate the insights of Einstein's...

The first digits of randomly chosen numbers arising naturally or in human affairs display surprising statistical regularities. We will...

Is there anything mathematically interesting about the paper sizes we use? We will see that their range of sizes has special features...

The commercially available 'Superball' of hard rough rubber displays many counterintuitive properties which seem to violate Newton's...

What are continued fractions?  How can they tell us what is the...

And first, the fair PARABOLA behold, Her timid arms with virgin blush unfold!...

Mathematical poetry may seem an unlikely form of...

How pictures have been used in mathematics.  The use of...

Felix Klein, one of the great nineteenth-century geometers, discovered in mathematics an idea prefigured in a Buddhist myth: the heaven...

Maths can tell us unexpected things about sporting movement and performance. We look at some of the things that we can learn about...

Simple maths can reveal how energy efficient different forms of transport are. We will look at how to drive as fuel efficiently as...