Just for Graphs (DVD/Download) - Festival of the Spoken Nerd ****

We don't usually review DVDs or video downloads here, but I'm making an exception for The Festival of the Spoken Nerd (FotSN). I'll start with a of disclaimer. I've seen FotSN both live, and on the download version of this video, and their shows do work a little better in the flesh than on the screen. I think it's partly because their exuberance is less overwhelming at a distance on a stage than it is a couple of feet away - and also because you get a lift from the rest of the audience, as you do with any live performance. But Just for Graphs still proved immensely entertaining when viewed at home.

The trio of physicist/singer Helen Arney, physicist/fire-fan Steve Mould and mathematician/more mathematician Matt Parker provide a funny and sometimes surprising canter through all sorts of things about graphs, charts, diagrams and more. If there's a possibility that you don't find this concept fills you with thrills, it's not what they do, it's the way that they do it. Alongside the graphing wizardry is stand up humour, witty songs and some cracking little demonstrations, from plotting a 'bar chart' of an audio sound wave with a series of dancing flames to the impressive Chladni patterns produced with a metal plate, a violin bow... and couscous. I've seen videos of this before (sans couscous), but seeing it in a live show made it come to life.

I was thinking part way through, 'This is effectively the next generation of the Royal Institution Christmas lectures I used to love when I was little'... only to have Matt Parker tell us that he was the warm-up man for the TV lectures. There's that same combination of interesting science and impressive demos, but FotSN bring an added layer of sophistication, humour and self-deprecation. (The latter comes across particularly strongly when Steve Mould talks about using an Excel plot to predict when his wife was going to give birth from the duration and frequency of her contractions.)

Overall, there is a good balance in the show. There was one section I felt didn't quite work as well as the rest... but then it's unusual to go and see a standup comedian without experiencing some highs and lows. And the FotSN crew don't hold back on making jokes you will only get if you have a fairly high nerd quotient; provided (like me) you're in that category, these are a delight. While I'd urge you to go and see FotSN live, this is the next best thing (and distinctly easier to slip into a Christmas stocking than a live show). You can get the DVD from Amazon, though they'd prefer you to buy it direct... and from their website you can also get the download version as I did... or even get it on VHS (no, really).

DVD:

Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you

DVD, download or VHS: Festival of the Spoken Nerd site

Review by Brian Clegg

Comments

The Language of Mathematics - Raúl Rojas ***

One of the biggest developments in the history of maths was moving from describing relationships and functions with words to using symbols. This interesting little book traces the origins of a whole range of symbols from those familiar to all, to the more obscure squiggles used in logic and elsewhere. On the whole Raúl Rojas does a good job of filling in some historical detail, if in what is generally a fairly dry fashion. We get to trace what was often a bumpy path as different symbols were employed (particularly, for example, for division and multiplication, where several still remain in use), but usually, gradually, standards were adopted. This feels better as a reference, to dip into if you want to find out about a specific symbol, rather than an interesting end to end read. Rojas tells us the sections are designed to be read in any order, which means that there is some overlap of text - it feels more like a collection of short essays or blog posts that he couldn't be bothered ...

Target Earth – Govert Schilling *****

I was biased in favour of this great little book even before I started to read it, simply because it’s so short. I’m sure that a lot of people who buy popular science books just want an overview and taster of a subject that’s brand new to them – and that’s likely to work best if the author keeps it short and to the point. Of course, you may want to dig deeper in areas that really interest you, but that’s what Google is for. That basic principle aside, I’m still in awe at how much substance Govert Schilling has managed to cram into this tiny book. It’s essentially about all the things (natural things, I mean, not UFOs or space junk) that can end up on Earth after coming down from outer space. That ranges from the microscopically small particles of cosmic dust that accumulate in our gutters, all the way up to the ten kilometre wide asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs. Between these extremes are two topics that we’ve reviewed entire books about recently: meteorites ( The Meteorite Hunt...

The Decline and Fall of the Human Empire - Henry Gee ****

In his last book, Henry Gee impressed with his A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth - this time he zooms in on one very specific aspect of life on Earth - humans - and gives us not just a history, but a prediction of the future - our extinction. The book starts with an entertaining prologue, to an extent bemoaning our obsession with dinosaurs, a story that leads, inexorably towards extinction. This is a fate, Gee points out, that will occur for every species, including our own. We then cover three potential stages of the rise and fall of humanity (the book's title is purposely modelled on Gibbon) - Rise, Fall and Escape. Gee's speciality is palaeontology and in the first section he takes us back to explore as much as we can know from the extremely patchy fossil record of the origins of the human family, the genus Homo and the eventual dominance of Homo sapiens , pushing out any remaining members of other closely related species. As we move onto the Fall section, Gee gives ...

Search This Blog