Humble Pi: Matt Parker’s Comedy of Errors
Friday 22nd November 2019 - Starts 8pm
“Visibly so genuinely excited about maths that it’s infectious. Likewise, his comedy is unmistakeable”
Broadway Baby
Matt Parker is a stand-up comedian and mathematician. He appears regularly on TV and online: as well as being a presenter on the Discovery Channel his YouTube videos have been viewed over 85 million times.
Humble Pi explores the greatest mathematical near-misses and mishaps involving planes, bridges, the internet, big data and more. Matt Parker shows us the bizarre ways maths trips us all up.
– In 1983, a Canadian flight crew used pounds instead of kilograms and a plane took off with about half the fuel it needed, running out mid-flight.
– In 2012, someone at JPMorgan Chase accidentally added two cells in a spreadsheet instead of taking their average and lost the company $2 billion USD.
– The European Spreadsheet Risks Interest Group estimates that 24% of all spreadsheets used in business contain a maths error.
– 19.6% of genetic research crunched in Excel contains errors where a gene name has been accidentally auto-corrected into a date.
In 2018 Matt calculated the number pi live on-stage in front of a sold-out Royal Albert Hall using a real pie. He is also the first person to use an overhead projector at the Hammersmith Apollo since Pink Floyd.
Suitable for 12+ but please note, it is an adult evening of stand up (maths).
“Hilarious … very, very great at explaining some pretty awesome things.”
Michael Stevens, Vsauce.
“Magician-like skills with tables of numbers”
The List
“Even the terminally maths-phobic (a class I belong to) will enjoy mathematician Matt Parker’s enthused, beaming delivery, as he makes maths challenges and diagrams into something oddly beautiful.”
ThreeWeeks
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