Humble Pi

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. Being wrong has never felt so right.

- 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 S2 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.

"Magician-like skills with tables of numbers" The List

"Visibly so genuinely excited about maths that it's infectious. Likewise, his comedy is unmistakeable" Broadway Baby

"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

Matt Parker is possibly the only person to hold the prestigious title of London Mathematical Society Popular Lecturer while simultaneously having a sold-out comedy show at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Matt is always keen to mix his two passions of mathematics and stand-up.

He appears regularly to talk about maths on the radio and TV (Discovery's You Have Been Warned, BBC2's James May's Things You Need to Know, Channel 4's Mating Season and BBC Radio 4's More or Less) as well as being all over the internet. Matt is also the author of Things to Make and Do in the Fourth Dimension (Penguin).

His favourite number is currently 3a67a54832.
Concessions £13