PODCAST

Maths at:

Thomas E. Woolley, Ben M. Parker, The Wonderful Liz

Winning at Maths. Losing at Life.

science & medicine

All Episodes

Answer to the Good Will Hunting puzzle

Maths at: ·

2019/02/28

In our Good Will Hunting podcast we asked: What is the highest number of eggs that you CAN'T make, when you have boxes of size 6, 9 and 20? Turns out this is called the McNuggest number as McNuggets originally came in boxes of this size. In this case, it turns out that 43 is the largest number you can't make, but how do you prove it? Well we note that: 44 = 4x6+20 45 = 5x9 46 = 6+2x20 47 = 3x9+20 48 = 8x6 49 = 9+2x20 Since we have 6 consecutive numbers that can all be made from 6, 9 and 20,

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Maths at the Movies: Fermat's Room

Maths at: ·

2019/02/19

Welcome to the strangely erotic episode of Maths at, where we watch the tense, psychological thriller, Fermat's Room (or La Habitación de Fermat, for you Spanish speakers) and we ask the real questions of... WHAT HAPPENED ON THE BOAT? As per usual, the time line is all wonky. This episode does follow on from A Beautiful Mind, but was recorded a long time after, so although we talk about our lives having changed dramatically, it's only bee two weeks for you and you already know what's happened if

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Puzzle from Good Will Hunting

Maths at: ·

2019/02/12

Ben's local shop stocks eggs in boxes of capacity 6, 9, or 20 eggs. What is the highest number of eggs that you CAN'T make? For example, you can make 29 with one 9 box and one 20 box, 29=9+20, you can make 30 with a five 6 boxes, 30=5x6. but you can't make 31. For those wanting an extra puzzle, can you prove that your answer is correct. Namely, all numbers higher than your chosen integer can be written as a linear combination of 6, 9 or 12.

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Answer to A Beautiful Mind puzzle

Maths at: ·

2019/02/08

In our podcast episode on A Beautiful Mind the following question was asked: Two trains are on the same track. They start 100km apart and head towards each other at a speed of 50km/h. Whilst these two trains are heading for their collision a fly starts out on the front of one train and zooms directly to the front of the other at a speed of 75km/h (see the animation above). Once the fly reaches the second train it immediately darts back to the front of the first train at the same speed and

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Maths at the Movies: Good Will Hunting

Maths at: ·

2019/02/05

Last week we did A Beautiful Mind and now Good Will Hunting. We are really hitting all the well-known maths films at the moment aren't we? More importantly joining us this week we have the wonderful Dr James Grime Philanthropist, playboy, billionaire... he is none of this things, but he may have identified the real Will Hunting! This week we touch on such subjects as: Is University a scam? Good Will Hunting needs a prequel! Will James and Liz ever write a paper about the maths of Dirty

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Puzzle from A Beautiful Mind.

Maths at: ·

2019/02/01

A classic puzzle to start our second series. It appears in the background of A Beautiful Mind and it is said that the famous mathematician John von Neumann immediately answered with the correct result. But we'll talk about solutions later! Animation illustrating the problem courtesy of MathWorld. Two trains are on the same track. They start 100km apart and head towards each other at a speed of 50km/h. Whilst these two trains are heading for their collision a fly starts out on the front of

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Maths at the Movies: A Beautiful Mind

Maths at: ·

2019/01/22

Ok, so the "Maths at" timeline is a mess. The Christmas episode was recorded in November. The Christmas episode reveals secrets from later on in the series. We tried to hide these secrets in the Mean Girls episode, which was recorded around seventh, but released first. When we I say that we've had a complaint about Liz's language it from the pi day episode, not the Mean Girls episode. Is that all clear? And this is all because the recording quality of this episode is a little dodgy! Sorry about

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Maths at the Movies: Mean Girls

Maths at: ·

2019/01/08

Mean girls... Mean girls? MEAN GIRLS! There is no font, size or punctuation mark that does full justice to Thomas' anger. This week, for some inexplicable reason, we watched the movie: Mean Girls. Join us as: Liz tries to convince Thomas that "Do you even go here?" is a funny line; Thomas' blood pressure shoots through the roof; Ben compares Mean Girls to the New Testament. and Liz compares it to a clockwork orange. If you're interested in watching Mean Girls then please get

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Maths at: Christmas 2018

Maths at: ·

2018/12/25

Nadolig Llawen to all our Listeners We hope Sion Corn has visited you on this fine festive day. For indeed we are BACK! And this episode went a bit Welsh! Much to Ben's chagrin. In this episode we find out: the female version of phallic; what eggnog actually is; how NORAD tracks santa; and how following stars probably won't lead you to the next messiah. To ensure at least some expertise on the panel we are joined by the wonderful physicist, astronmer and raconteur: Dr William Taylor

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Bringing down the House

Maths at: ·

2018/08/12

Maths at the Library: How Six Students Took Vegas for Millions Looking back since our first podcast, we've learnt a lot about the portrayal of mathematicians in movies, mostly as psychopaths or murderers; that most sports are played on rectangles (thanks, Donald Duck!); and that statisticians are mostly fat. In our first ever podcast, we reviewed the movie "21". We generally found it a nifty and exciting movie documenting a little maths, and the dark forces of Las Vegas, and all enjoyed it. The

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Friday factoid- Friday 13th occurs far too frequently.

Maths at: ·

2018/04/13

Friday 13th is an unlucky day in the UK. British people stay at home, don't make eye contact in public, and spend their day complaining, mostly about the weather. Did you know, however, that the 13th is more likely to be a Friday than any other day? And also, coincidentally, Friday the 13th is the equally-most likely day number/day name combination to occur? Why? We know the year for the Earth (the time it takes us to do one orbit of the Sun) is 365.242189 days. This is annoying for calendar

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So what have we learned?

Maths at: ·

2018/04/05

Although we provided a fun marking scheme at the end of every episode we decided to actually plot our opinions in the following quality graphs. Horizontal axes provide a measure of quality of the film, whilst vertical axes provide a a measure of quality of the maths. Our first graph illustrates all of our differing opinions. Each film has a different marker and the colour of each marker links to a particular person's tastes. We can clearly see that Interstellar was a favourite all round, whilst

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Answer to the Interstellar puzzle

Maths at: ·

2018/04/02

In our Interstellar podcast, Thomas posed the following puzzle: A group of people with assorted eye colors (say 10 blue and 10 brown) live on an island. Everyone can see the eye colour of everyone else, but they can't communicate to each other to tell each other their eye colour. Every night at midnight, a ferry stops at the island. Any islanders who have figured out the colour of their own eyes can leave the island. One day a sailor from the ferry gets off the boat and says: "I can see

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Maths at: pi day

Maths at: ·

2018/03/14

Happy pi day everyone. We figure that pi day is the like Hallowe'en for mathematicians. It's a day they get to cut loose and throw away their inhibitions. As such Lorraine's intro pertaining to strong language is particularly pertinent for today's podcast. It starts out quite coarse. So sit back, grab a slice of your favourite pie and enjoy as Ben sings you the song of his people. Further reading links: Why not listen to our review of the film pi; The best web address known to man; The

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Puzzle from Interstellar

Maths at: ·

2018/03/10

In our Interstellar podcast, Thomas posed the following puzzle: A group of people with assorted eye colors (say 10 blue and 10 brown) live on an island. No one knows the color of their eyes as there are no mirrors on the island and the water is muddy so you can't use the reflection. For all each person knows, they could have green eyes! However, everyone can see the eye colour of everyone else, but they can't communicate to each other to tell each other their eye colour. Every night at

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Solution to The Oxford Murders puzzle

Maths at: ·

2018/03/07

In our Oxford Murders podcast, Ben posed the following puzzle: Suppose you are going to play chess against two people: one person is really good, one person is quite bad. You are going to play three games and you always have to alternate your opponents. Namely, you can either choose to play the opponents in the order Good, Bad, Good, or you can play the opponents in the order Bad, Good, Bad. Which of these two play sequences gives you the optimal chance of winning two consecutive

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Puzzle from The Oxford Murders

Maths at: ·

2018/03/02

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Flatland puzzle answer

Maths at: ·

2018/03/01

In ourFlatland podcastThomas asked the question: What is six divided by two plus one times two? You can hear the solution in our Oxford Murders podcast or read on below. So what did you get? 1? 4? 5? Something else completely? Well, whatever your answer is, you're completely correct (as long as you did the arithmetic correctly). The problem with the phrase What is six divided by two plus one times two? is that it can be read in many different ways. For example, it could

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Question from Flatland

Maths at: ·

2018/02/23

In our Flatland podcastThomas asked the question: What is six divided by two plus one times two? Sounds easy right? Can't possibly get it wrong? If you think you have the answer comment below, tweet it to us@PodcastMathsAt, or email us at podcastmaths@gmail.com.

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Maths at: Valentine's day

Maths at: ·

2018/02/14

Although we've finished our first series, we couldn't miss St Valentine's day. What could be more romantic than scientifically analysing love and romance using mathematics? Amongst other things we discuss: Why should you dump the first 37% of your partners? How many snogs away from Prince Charles are you? Are you a validator or an avoider? Join your hosts as they show you their romantic side and be surprised that any of them actually have partners! Further reading links: Ben's bunkum

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