British mathematicians teach more magic

The UK-based recreational math channel Numberphile is still on a magic spree. Here they explain a card trick made popular by the Scientific American columnist (and pretty much hero to nerds everywhere) Martin Gardner. 

Again, it's one of those tricks that young aspiring magicians often show me, albeit with different phrases. It's nice for kids because it doesn't require any manual dexterity, but rather remembering a sequence and when to use it. It also provides some immediately feedback. (Either the cards match or they don't and you know right away.)

Alternative Math

Before diving head first into the world of magic, I studied Math at the University of Toronto. (And also business, but practical life skills are overrated.) So things like this speak to me:

It's a little long for casual internet time-wasting the payoff at the end was entirely worth it.

Making Magic Easier

This came up recently over at Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal: 

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal by Zach Weinersmith

I would totally try this in my next show if I thought for a second anyone in a Canadian audience would know what the word "polity" meant.

All about the Bayes

Bayes' Theorem, discovered by the Reverend Thomas Bayes in the eighteenth century. When you have something you're not sure of, it's the calculation you perform to update your belief when you encounter new evidence. It's essentially the mathematical underpinning of the scientific method and it's an incredibly valuable thing to understand.

All that coolness aside, this is still the most badass titles for a statistics lesson!

Toronto's repository of Wonder

When talking with people after a show, surprisingly often if I've ever been to that store they remember from their childhood near Bathurst & Eglinton. They're talking about the city's local magic emporium, The Browser's Den of Magic (which moved a number of years ago to Dufferin and the 401) and everyone with an interest in magic usually winds their way there eventually. 

They were recently featured in a short article on Toronto.com when a journalist stumbled on to their monthly magic club meeting. If you have an interest in magic, it's definitely worth a trip to explore what's inside. 

Douglas Adams and the Puddle

The great British author Douglas Adams, who created The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and also... actually it doesn't matter what else he did, because he created The Hitchhiker's Guide and that's enough for a few lifetimes!

Anyways, he was a tremendous fan of technology and thought deeply about its impact on the world around him. Although he passed away in 2001 and never got to see the utter explosion of the internet and platforms like YouTube, so video of him is rather rare and he mostly survives through his writing. 

Here's a fantastic short collection from later in his life when he had shifted his focus from writing science fiction to nature conservancy. But whether he was talking about alien space ships or endangered species, he had a unique way of looking at the world:

It says "Part 1", so perhaps there's more to look forward to. Or maybe it's like Mel Brooks' The History of the World Part One.