Outreach
- Best Lecturer Competition in Ontario:
I was one of 10 finalists in TV Ontario's Best Lecturer in Ontario 2005 (the intellectual's Canadian Idol) competition.
As part of the competition for the final winner, I gave a televised public lecture on mathematics titled Symmetry: Nature, Art, and
Mathematics, aired October 2005 on TV Ontario's Big Ideas program. You can download the audio (sorry, no video is available) of my lecture
here .
- More 2 Life on TV Ontario:
During the 2005-2006 academic year, I regularly appeared on TV Ontario's ``More 2 Life'' program with host Mary Ito,
discussing mathematics in everyday life.
- Testing for diseases, 10 November 2005
- Averages versus medians, 20 December 2005
- Stock market scams, 18 January 2006
- The marriage problem, 10 February 2006
- Discounts, survey results, and other percentages, 15 March 2006
- Discrimination and Simpson's paradox, 12 April 2006
- Biased sampling in surveys, 10 May 2006
- Understanding (il)logical arguments, June 2006
- Math at Mac:
In February 2007, McMaster hosted ``Math-at-Mac'', a one-day event in which local
high school students from the Hamilton/Burlington area came to the McMaster campus for math lectures,
hands-on group activities, and problem-solving contests. I gave one of the lectures, on the topic
of error-correcting codes.
- Origins Institute Public Lecture:
I gave a general-audience lecture
on ``Visualizing Geometry: the Shape of Space'' as part of the McMaster Origins Institute Colloquium Series
in March 2009.