All Squared, Number 8: Martin Gardner (Colm Mulcahy part 2)

10/06/13 • 24 min

This is the second and final part of our interview with Colm Mulcahy. Last week we talked about card magic; in this part we moved on to the subject of Martin Gardner and the gatherings of interesting people associated with his name.

We’ve tacked on some blather we recorded about the British Science Festival in Newcastle to the end of this podcast. Listen in to hear what we think about maths! (We’re broadly in favour of it.)

Here are some links to go with the things we talked about:

Martin’s autobiography, Undiluted Hocus Pocus, came out last month. Here’s a review in Plus Magazine.
Mathematics Awareness Month in 2014 will be on the theme of “Magic, Mystery and Mathematics”, to celebrate Martin Gardner’s centenary.
The Gathering 4 Gardner happens every two years. The next one is in 2014, but it’s invitation only!
Celebrations of Mind happen all round the world to carry on the Gardnerian spirit. You can look at a map of all the events and register your own at the official site.

Colm’s book Mathematical Card Magic: Fifty-Two New Effects is published by CRC Press, priced £19.99/$29.95 and available from the booksellers in general.

We’ve tacked on some blather we recorded about the British Science Festival in Newcastle to the end of this podcast. Listen in to hear what we think about maths! (We’re broadly in favour of it.)

Here are some links to go with the things we talked about:

Martin’s autobiography, Undiluted Hocus Pocus, came out last month. Here’s a review in Plus Magazine.
Mathematics Awareness Month in 2014 will be on the theme of “Magic, Mystery and Mathematics”, to celebrate Martin Gardner’s centenary.
The Gathering 4 Gardner happens every two years. The next one is in 2014, but it’s invitation only!
Celebrations of Mind happen all round the world to carry on the Gardnerian spirit. You can look at a map of all the events and register your own at the official site.

Colm’s book Mathematical Card Magic: Fifty-Two New Effects is published by CRC Press, priced £19.99/$29.95 and available from the booksellers in general.

Previous Episode

All Squared, Number 7: Card Magic (Colm Mulcahy part 1)

Colm Mulcahy is an original Aperiodical contributor (Aperiodicontributor?) and friend of the site. He’s spent the last year and a bit writing his new book, Mathematical Card Magic: Fifty-Two New Effects. It came out a few weeks ago, so we thought it was a good opportunity to talk to him and find out just what’s so great about mathematical magic tricks.

Actually, we had that thought quite a while ago and if we’d been the least bit organised this podcast would’ve come out the same day as the book. As it happened, we first arranged to talk to Colm back in May, and then it took literally three months before we actually managed to record the interview.

... And then it took us three weeks to edit it up and upload it. Sorry!

Because Colm had so much interesting stuff to say, we’ve split the interview into two parts. In this first half we talk about the book and mathematical card magic; in the second part, out next week, we talk about Martin Gardner and the Celebration of Mind.

Mathematical Card Magic: Fifty-Two New Effects is published by CRC Press, priced £19.99/$29.95.

Next Episode

All Squared, Number 9: Miscellanea with CP and Cushing

We have an unusual All Squared podcast for you this time. My good friend David Cushing has been asking to do a podcast for absolutely ages. We couldn’t decide on a single topic to talk about, so instead I suggested we just sit down and chat about maths in general, like we do when there isn’t a microphone in front of us.

We talked for about an hour and a half, but because I’m completely stupid we lost a big chunk of it when the microphone switched off. To make things even worse, we recorded in a room with a ridiculously loud fan, so there’s that to contend with. Anyway, we talked about some fun stuff, so I think it’s worth listening to.

Here are some links relevant to the things we talked about.

David would like you to know that $5 \times 16017 = 80085$.
The book David brought was Topology, by James Munkres.
Brouwer’s fixed-point theorem says that for any continuous function $f$ with certain properties mapping a compact convex set into itself there is a point $x_0$ such that $f(x_0) = x_0$.
The pancake theorem is referred to by MathWorld as “a two-dimensional version of the ham sandwich theorem”, so CP wins. The ham sandwich theorem says that the volumes of any $n$ $n$-dimensional solids can be simultaneously bisected by an $(n-1)$-dimensional hyperplane.
The hairy ball theorem says that there is no nonvanishing continuous tangent vector field on even-dimensional $n$-spheres – there’s always a point on the sphere where the function is zero.
The black hole information paradox says that it’s possible for a black hole to destroy information. In 2004 Stephen Hawking conceded his bet that information is destroyed, so CP wins again. (Guess who’s writing this summary)
The book CP brought was Only Problems, Not Solutions by Florentin Smarandache. It turns out he’s a bit of a character!
The family of sequences which contains a sequence for each digit, except inexplicably 1, was “Primes with $n$ consecutive digits beginning with the digit $D$”
Problem 102 of Only Problems... contained this cool diagram:
We can’t remember what “the Russian book” was. Sorry!
The powerful numbers are sequence A060355 in the OEIS.
Paul Erdős made a conjecture on arithmetic progressions.
The Bee Gees consisted of brothers Barry, Robin, and Maurice Gibb. That’s three people: a powerful triple.
$x^2 – 8y^2 = 1$ is a Pell equation, and the reason why the continued fraction representation of $\sqrt{8}$ generates consecutive pairs of powerful numbers.
The Muddy Children puzzle is a good introduction to public announcement logic. The slides we were looking at were “The Muddy Children: a logic for public announcement”, by Jesse Hughes.
Analysis vs Algebra predicts eating corn?
David was playing Wuzzit Trouble by InnerTube Games. It was reviewed here by Colin Beveridge last month.