John D Barrow: Not Just About Numbers

Synopsis: A recording of a public lecture delivered by John D. Barrow at the Royal Society on 19 October 2004.

What is mathematics and why does it work? In this talk John Barrow takes a look at some of the ways in which mathematics can tell us things about the world that we cannot learn in any other way: how computers have extended the reach of human mathematicians, the simple nature of many hard problems that no computer can solve, how to win at dice and even discover whether the Premier Football League is just a random process.

He explains the modern concepts of chaos and complexity, showing how we can use them to shed light on Abstract Expressionist art, detect art fraud, and discover why it is possible to send spacecraft to the Moon with pin-point precision and yet fail to predict tomorrow’s weather.
Language: English
Country: Great Britain
Year of release: 2004
Year of production: 2004
Subjects: Mathematics
Keywords: applied mathematics; chaos theory; probability theory

Name: Royal Society: Royalsociety.tv
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Notes: Royalsociety.tv offers live webcasts as well as podcasts and free, on-demand streaming of video and audio recordings of events held at the Royal Society. Lectures and discussions feature leading scientists and cover history of science as well as exploring cutting-edge science and culture.

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British Universities Film & Video Council