Magic at Mile End Queen Mary University of London

Dr. Morris, a 47-year member of the International Brotherhood of Magicians, will take a tour through the mathematical magic which underpins card tricks, and which is also essential for understanding data storage and movement in computers. Dr. Morris, whose doctoral dissertation is titled "Permutations by Cutting and Shuffling: A Generalization to Q Dimensions" is believed to hold the only PhD in card shuffling, and will combine illusion, maths and memory chips to explain the science behind the "perfect shuffle". As well as designing a memory chip that emulates a hard disk, Dr. Morris will perform a brand new trick that he has recently perfected, and will attempt to move any named card to any location in the deck with exactly six perfect shuffles.

There seems to be no end to the mathemagical things one can explore with a simple deck of cards, from algebra and combinatorics to probability and statistics. In this exclusive talk given at Queen Mary University of London, Professor Colm Mulcahy surveys a wealth of recent material, mostly drawn from his upcoming AK Peters book on the subject. Two special features include "The Father Ted" card trick, and examples of "two-person mathemagic," in which communication is done via nontrivial pre-agreed mathematical conventions. Colm uses mathemagic to stimulate general interest in mathematics and to liven up many mathematics classes. His mathematical interests are broad, and he is a recipient of the Mathematical Association of America's Allendoerfer Award for excellence in expository writing on wavelets. He blogs at the Aperiodical and the Huffington Post, and tweets at @CardColm.

An in depth interview and a few tricks presented by Professor Peter McOwan highlighting how science and magic can come together, tricks of the trade, Queen Mary’s research into magic and creating something mysterious on the international space station.

Dr. Arthur Benjamin is a Professor of Mathematics at Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, California. He is also a professional magician, and for the last 25 years he has presented his mixture of math and magic all over the world to thousands of groups. He has authored several books and DVD courses, including The Joy of Mathematics and The Secrets of Mental Math. In their Best of America issue, Reader's Digest recently called him America’s Best Math Whiz. In his entertaining and fast-paced performance, Dr. Benjamin demonstrates how to mentally add and multiply numbers faster than a calculator, compute the day of the week of any date in history, and other amazing feats of mind. It also features an extended Q and A where Dr. Benjamin explains the mathematics behind some of his most amazing tricks.