In this special segment, John H. Conway reminisces on his long friendship and collaboration with Martin Gardner. 

Standard Podcast [ 57:24 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Greg Chaitin, author most recently of MetaMath!,  discusses the ubiquity of undecidability: incredibly all kinds of mathematical and physical systems exhibit utterly unpredictable, baffling behavior– and it’s possible to prove we can never fully understand why!

Standard Podcast [ 1:02:19 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Quick interviews with folks here at the Gathering For Gardner, including Stephen Wolfram, Will Shortz,  Dale Seymour, John Conway and many others. 

Report From The Gathering For Gardner [ 18:58 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

The world’s largest ever exhibit of Escher’s works is on display, right now, at the Boca Raton Musuem of Art If you can, this is a must see event! We talk with the collector, Rock J. Walker about his fascination with this amazing work.

And of course we answer last week’s puzzle, and hear from listeners!

Standard Podcast Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Kyle and Chaim get into trouble with their wives and Mathfactor correspondent, Stephen Morris, discusses the Kate Bush Conjecture and And The Clocks Struck Thirteen  

Standard Podcast [ 10:33 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Oh by the way, would you like a cool Math Factor Poster? Click on this to download:

Our favorite new and not-so-new products of 2008!

Standard Podcast [ 17:14 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Check out these great gifts!

• Zome is an incredibly powerful construction system!
• the great puzzles of Puzzellation (available at Barnes and Nobles)
• The terrific puzzle computer game DROD
• The Magic Mirror Image Coloring Book
• The Riddles of the Sphinx by David J Bodycombe, an amazing compendium of puzzles, of hundreds of kinds, at all levels of difficulty, with historical essays to boot!
• Which leads us to Nikoli, the great Japanese puzzle co! (Rules can be found here)
• The Princeton Companion to Mathematics is a landmark classic. A must-have for every serious student, researcher or amateur.
• How Round is Your Circle just one of the many fantastic titles out on Princeton University Press
• AK Peters is another fantastic press, with a wide range of interesting math and CS titles, including, ahem, the Symmetries of Things.
• Binary Arts/ThinkFun is another source of great puzzles!
• And the authors Martin Gardner and Ivan Moscovitch are always fantastic!

Hope this helps and have fun!! Let us know how it works out!

Happy Holidays from the Math Factor!

Standard Podcast [ 6:10 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Dana Richards, editor of The Colossal Book of Short Puzzles and Problems discusses the amazing Martin Gardner and his legacy!

Standard Podcast [ 11:06 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

M.C. Escher expert Doris Schattschneider, author of Visions of Symmetry, sits down with us in Leeuwarden Friesland, Escher’s boyhood hometown, to discuss his life and work.

Standard Podcast [ 6:49 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Art Benjamin, mathemagician at Harvey Mudd, staggers, astounds and entertains!

Eric Demaine of MIT will control your minds across all time and all space!

Not surprisingly, we suppose, this trick is closely related to an important mathematical tool of the telecommunications industry:

Gray Codes are tremendously useful; a great, very readable discussion is in Chapter 2 of Martin Gardner’s Knotted Donuts and Other Mathematical Entertainments.

Standard Podcast [ 9:31 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download