1. Matt Parker is a former teacher and has helped popularise mathematics via his tours and videos.
27 Facts About Matt Parker
1. 2.
Matt Parker was born in Perth, Western Australia, and grew up in the northern suburb of Duncraig.
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Matt Parker began showing an interest in maths and science from a young age, and at one point was part of his school's titration team.
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Matt Parker became involved in support education, working with universities and other organizations to arrange maths talks.
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Matt Parker later returned to teaching, before stopping after one year.
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Matt Parker now helps students communicate mathematics to other people, speaks at schools, does media work, and occasionally writes about maths.
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Matt Parker has appeared in numerous YouTube videos, talking about various subjects related to mathematics.
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Matt Parker has made videos about unboxing calculators, including the Little Professor; he presents these videos as a member of a fictional "Calculator Appreciation Society".
9.
Matt Parker appeared in a Tom Scott YouTube video, where they gave tips for users of the London Underground.
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Matt Parker has toured the UK solo and as part of comedy group Festival of the Spoken Nerd, along with Helen Arney and Steve Mould.
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Matt Parker has written the book Things to Make and Do in the Fourth Dimension.
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In 2014, Matt Parker set up Think Maths, a team of experienced mathematics speakers who visit schools to run workshops and give talks for a wide range of ages and abilities, to show students the wider world of maths beyond school while giving them a chance to develop mathematical thinking skills.
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In 2016, Matt Parker appeared briefly as a guest on the British comedy panel game quiz show, QI.
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Matt Parker has appeared on BBC Radio Four's The Infinite Monkey Cage with Robin Ince and Brian Cox.
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Matt Parker has talked about maths-related topics on BBC News, Sky News, Channel4, CBBC, and occasionally writes for The Guardian.
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On TV, Matt Parker is a regular commentator on Discovery's Outrageous Acts of Science.
17.
The official response stated it would be too costly to replace the current signs; however, Matt Parker said he only asked for a "precedent for the new signs".
18.
In regards to the exact geometry of a football, Matt Parker said he is "not asking for angles and measurements on the sign, just for it to look more like a football".
19.
Together with another YouTube mathematics populariser, Vi Hart, Matt Parker won the 2018 Communications Award of the Joint Policy Board for Mathematics for "communicating the excitement of mathematics to a worldwide audience through YouTube videos, TV and radio appearances, book and newspaper writings, and stand-up comedy".
20.
Matt Parker was awarded the 2020 IMA-LMS Christopher Zeeman Medal in recognition of his "excellence in the communication of mathematics".
21.
Matt Parker introduced the recreational mathematics concept of a grafting number, an integer with the property that the square root of the integer, when expressed in base b, will contain the original integer itself before or directly after the decimal point.
22.
Matt Parker is the namesake of the Matt Parker square, an internet meme consisting of a trivial semimagic square.
23.
Matt Parker was attempting to create a magic square made up of all square numbers, however fell quite short of the goal.
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The semimagic square Matt Parker created uses some numbers more than once, and the diagonal sums to 4107, not 3051 as for all the other rows, columns, or diagonal.
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The Matt Parker Square became a "mascot for people who give it a go, but ultimately fall short".
26.
Matt Parker married the English solar physicist Lucie Green in July 2014.
27.
Matt Parker has a labrador retriever called Skylab who has her own YouTube channel.