Ri Christmas Lecture Live Screening

Join us at University of Birmingham to be part of the first nation-wide live screening of the Ri Christmas Lectures, which this year will be given by Dr Hannah Fry (Associate Professor in the Mathematics of Cities at the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, University College London).

If you're anything like us, you might have watched the merry audience members at the Royal Institution's Christmas Lectures on TV and thought, how come kids in London get to have all the fun? Well first off, the audience is selected by ballot from across the UK, but it is true that the iconic Faraday Lecture Theatre limits the numbers who get to see things live to a few hundred. Until now, that is!

In ‘Secrets and lies: The Hidden Power of Maths’, Hannah will unmask the hidden numbers, rules and patterns that secretly influence our daily lives in powerful and surprising ways. After all, life’s most astonishing miracles can be understood with probability. Big data dictates many of the hot new fashions we follow. Even our choice of what we watch on TV, or our choice of who we marry, is secretly influenced by computer algorithms.

That’s not all... As well as the brilliant live experiments happening on-screen, there will also be a geometrical jamboree of hands-on demonstrations, performances, lightning talks, quizzes and more from amazing University of Birmingham researchers. They’ll be exploring the incredible ways that maths underpins and connects everything from medical diagnoses, dentistry, and clinical trials to the ethics of robotics, gambling and how we judge risk and even how we’re born.

Please note: advanced booking for this event is highly recommended. The lecture screening is expected to last until at least 19:15. Refreshments and hands-on activities will be available in the concert hall foyer, talks and performances will be in the screening hall. Parking is available free on site and the venue is fully accessible.