Group:MathSpace

MathSpace
When	Alternate Fridays, from 18:30
What	Talks and workshops on mathematical subjects
Members
Camzzz Elaranodiscoteca MScroggs Wyan

The London MathSpace is a group which meets every other Friday to discuss mathematics. We host talks, problem-solving and programming events.

All our events are held at London Hackspace, 447 Hackney Road.

If you would like to do a talk or have any ideas for an event, please say so here or on our mailing list.

Next Event

Talks: Braid, Tetris, games of pursuit, Pac-Man and other games

20 March 2015 at 18:30

Hosted by MathSpace

Our next MathSpace event will be held on Friday the 20th of March from 18:30 onwards in the classroom. At this event, we will be hearing a series of talks on the theme of games. The plan is (with approximate timings): 18:30 - Doors open. Cake and puzzles. 19:00 - Optimal Pac-Man (Matthew Scroggs) 19:15 - Games of Pursuit (Alex Bolton) 19:30 - Video Games Are Hard, But Some Are Harder Than Others (Linus Hamilton) 20:00 - Discussion and social time Also there will be cake. Video Games Are Hard, But Some Are Harder Than Others You don't want the NSA to read your private emails. You want to play Tetris perfectly. Computational complexity theory tells us that these goals are mutually incompatible. This talk discusses P vs NP, the halting problem, and how the video game Braid can lead to serious maths. Games of Pursuit In a game of pursuit one team has to track down and catch the other team. I will present three examples of these games along with their solutions. Optimal Pac-Man Want to save time while completing Pac-Man? I can show you how. I might even teach you some graph theory along the way.

Future events

All talks listed here are provisional. If you would like to give a talk of suggest a non-talks event, please add it to a date here. For questions and discussion, use our mailing list.

Talks	Non-Talks
20 March 2015 How to build a propositional logic robot (Matthew Scroggs) Decision making under uncertainty (Cameron) Video games are hard, but some are harder than others (Linus Hamilton) 17 April 2015 How to build a propositional logic robot (Matthew Scroggs) 15 May 2015 (Olly) 12 June 2015	03 April 2015 (Good Friday) 01 May 2015 Maths Challenge Team competition (Matthew Scroggs) 29 May 2015 26 June 2015

Proposed talks

Name	Topic	Approximate length	Other details
Matthew Scroggs	How to build a propositional logic robot	20-30 mins	How I built @mathslogicbot and some of the maths behind it.
Cameron	Decision making under uncertainty	15-20 mins	Models for how we make decisions under uncertainty, starting from Utility theory
Linus Hamilton	Video games are hard, but some are harder than others	20-30 mins	Computational complexity theory, applied to problems such as Braid, the Riemann Hypothesis, and Candy Crush
(Your Name Here)	(Title)	(Length)	(What you will talk about)

Past meetings

20 Feb 2015

• Morality Metrics on the Iterated Prisoners Dilemma (Axel Wagner)
• The Fluid Dynamics of Chocolate fountains (Adam Townsend)

06 Feb 2015

• Project Euler maths and programming evening.

23 Jan 2015

• Folding Tube Maps (Matthew Scroggs) - write up
• AI and Bots in Game Design (Martin Clarke) slides
• Regime detection in multivariate stochastic processes (Alex Bolton)

09 Jan 2015

• Voting Theory (Alex Bolton) - slides

05 Dec 2014

• Diffie-Hellman Key Exchange (Axel Wagner) - slides

21 Nov 2014

• Braiding (Matthew Scroggs) - write up

24 Oct 2014

• Flexagons (Matthew Scroggs) - Flexagon templates