Mathematics Awareness Centre at Warwick

The Mathematics Awareness Centre at Warwick is a small centre that coordinates activities in the Public Understanding of Science, with special emphasis on the mathematical sciences. In particular it responds to queries from the media on mathematics-related matters.

Activities include popular lectures, radio and television broadcasts, and magazine and news articles.

Recent activities include:

Lectures

Harvard, Cambridge MA, Clay Mathematics Institute Public Lecture, Minesweeper Math, 1.11.00.

Berlin, Urania, Mathematische Muster bei der Fortbewegung von Meschen und Tiere (Mathematical patterns in the movement of humans and animals), 9.2.01.

Barcelona, Autonomous University of Barcelona, Symmetry and pattern formation, 23.4.01.

Leuven, 16th Flemish Scientific Olympiad, The geometry of time travel, 16.5.01.

London, Institute for Contemporary Arts, The search for a common aesthetic, 24.5.01.

Hay-on-Wye, Hay Literary Festival, Flatterland, 31.5.01.

London, Royal Institution, BOXMIND debate: E-learning: academic excellence online? (Richard Dawkins, Sue Blackmore, Niall Ferguson, David Womersley, David Auckland, Susan Greenefield, Ian Stewart; chair: John Humphrys) 11.10.01.

Edinburgh, Edinburgh International Science Festival, Royal Museum & Museum of Scotland, What shape is a snowflake?, 8.4.02.

Warsaw, Banach Center and Technical University, Mathematical patterns in nature, 20.6.02.

Radio

BBC Radio-4, The Brains Trust, presenter Joan Bakewell, with Jonathan Grant, Ian Stewart, Angela Tilby, and Theodore Zeldin, 5.1.00.

BBC Radio-4, Start the Week, presenter Jeremy Paxman, with Robert Hewison, Ian Stewart, Danah Zohar, and Howard Goodall, 6.3.00.

BBC Radio-5, Radio 5 Live, European Space Agency and Science Fiction, 12.5.00.

BBC World Service, Science in Action, DNA computing, 19.5.00.

BBC Radio-2, Richard Allinson Show, interview on common lottery numbers, 2.8.00.

BBC Radio-4, Material World, discussion with Steve Strogatz on synchronisation, 31.8.00

BBC World Service, Science in Action, Chaotic computing, 27.9.00.

BBC Radio-4, In our time, The meaning of mathematics, with John Barrow, Ian Stewart, and Margaret Wertheim, host Melvyn Bragg, producer Charlie Taylor, 11.1.01.

BBC Radio-4, Coincidences, interview on coincidences in mathematics, producer Brian King, 29.3.01.

BBC World Service, Material world, interview on knots, with Keith Devlin, producer John Watkins, 9.4.01.

BBC Radio 4, Complexity, presenter Jacquie McGlade, 11.2.02.

BBC radio 4, Alien life, In our time, presenter Melvyn Bragg, with Heather Couper , Ian Stewart, and Simon Goodwin, 4.4.02.

Television

BBC World TV, Business News, interview on telephone number changes, 20.4.00.

Spanish TV, interview with Eduardo Punset on mathematical patterns in nature, 12.6.00.

Channel-39 News, Houston TX, USA, interview on lotteries, game shows, and probability, 16.11.00.

BBC UK Knowledge, Aliens and the Drake Equation, 19.3.01.

Sky-TV, Future File, Genetic Algorithms, 21.3.01.

BBC-1, Midlands Today, interview on lottery coincidences, 5.6.02.

News and Magazines

Mathematics in the twenty-first century, Prometheus 4 (2001) 40-44.

Secret narratives of mathematics, in Mission to Abisko (ed. J.Casti and A. Karlqvist), Perseus, Reading MA 1999, 157-185.

The calculus, in The Science Book (ed. P. Tallack), Cassel 2001, 80-81.

What could go wrong? New Scientist 2308 (15 September 2001) 36-39.

Tales of the unexpected, New Scientist 2322/2323 (22 December 2001) 68-69.

The mathematics of 2050, in The Next Fifty Years (ed. J.Brockman) Vintage, New York 2002, 29-40.

Who wants to be a millionaire? New Scientist 2345 (1 June 2002) 26-31.

MAC@W regrets that it cannot provide lectures for individual schools