Things to Make and Do in the Fourth Dimension Synopsis
Stand-up mathematician and star of Festival of the Spoken Nerd, Matt Parker presents Things to Make and Do in the Fourth Dimension - a riotous journey through the possibilities of numbers, with audience participation: cut pizzas in new and fairer ways; fit a 2p coin through an impossibly small hole; make a perfect regular pentagon by knotting a piece of paper; tie your shoes faster than ever before, saving literally seconds of your life; use those extra seconds to contemplate the diminishing returns of an exclamation-point at the end of every bullet-point; and, make a working computer out of dominoes. Maths is a game. This book can be cut, drawn in, folded into shapes and will even take you to the fourth dimension. So join stand-up mathematician Matt Parker on a journey through narcissistic numbers, optimal dating algorithms, at least two different kinds of infinity and more. Matt Parker is a stand-up comedian and mathematician. He writes about maths for the Guardian, has a maths column in the Telegraph, is a regular panellist on Radio 4's The Infinite Monkey Cage, and has performed his maths stand-up routines in front of audiences of thousands.
'Matt Parker is some sort of unholy fusion of a prankster, wizard and brilliant nerd - clever, funny and ever so slightly naughty'
- Adam Rutherford, author of CREATION
'Shows off maths at its most playful and multifarious, ranging from classics like knot theory and ruler-and-compass constructions to more whimsical topics like the topology of beer logos and error-correcting scarves'
- Jordan Ellenberg, author of HOW NOT TO BE WRONG
Author
About Matt Parker
Matt Parker, known as the Stand-up Mathematician, can be seen talking about maths on the BBC, in the Guardian and on stages across the UK, at science fairs, festivals and in theatres. Originally a maths teacher from Australia, Matt now lives in Guildford in a house full of almost every retro video-game console ever made. Nothing can ever stand between Matt and computers: he's fluent in binary and could write your name in a sequence of 0s and 1s in seconds. In 2012 he and the Think Maths team made a fully functioning computer out of domino circuits: it took 10,000 dominoes, 12 people and 6 hours. When he's not working as the Public Engagement in Mathematics Fellow at Queen Mary University of London, doing stand-up or signing fans' calculators at the end of a show, Matt spends his time converting photographs into Excel spreadsheets. His favourite number is currently 2025.
