Holgate Lectures - titles offered by Kevin Houston

Lecture 1: Mathematics and Card Cheating

A talk combining mathematics and card cheating that includes

• perfect shuffles
• (not) cheating at cards
• the game of Faro
• some mind reading.
  

The talk is suitable for Years 11 to 13.

Lecture 2: A Million Dollars Declined: The Poincaré Conjecture

The story of how a hundred year-old problem was solved. Included are:

• Poincaré's conjecture explained.
• Steve Smale on the beaches of Rio.
• How not to solve the problem and the attack dogs of Berkley.
• How to solve the problem.
• Perelman declines the million dollar prize.
• Perelman declines the Fields Medal.
  
  

Lecture 3: The World Is Not Flat

Some interesting topics showing applications of geometry to the real world. Can include:

• *Pythagoras
• How a librarian from ancient Egypt measured the size of the Earth
• How to draw circles, parabolas, ellipses and hyperbolas
• How GPS works
• The longitude problem.
• Why does Greenland look bigger than South America on a wall map?
  

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