Matt Parker and a team of Domino Computer Builders balanced over 10,000 dominoes in a carefully designed circuit. The result was a Domino Computer capable of automatically adding numbers. It can take any two four-digit binary numbers and return the five-digit binary sum.

Its a computer, made of dominoes.

Watch the Numberphile where Matt explains more of the maths: youtu.be/lNuPy-r1GuQ
As well as the secret Numberphile bonus interview: youtu.be/rEw2hE8ZRlY

There are free worksheets and teaching resources about binary numbers and logic gates here:
think-maths.co.uk/downloads/domino-computer-worksheets

Computer design:
Matt Parker, Katie Steckles, Paul Taylor, Andrew Taylor, Siân Fryer

Builders:
Ben Curtis, Becky Smedley, Mike Bell, Blair Lavelle, Andrew Pontzen, Jonathan Sanderson, Elin Roberts, Chris Roberts, Ben Ashforth, Gillian Kiernan, David Julyan

Thanks to Marieke Navin, Natalie Ireland, Nicola Frost and everyone at the Museum of Science and Industry who made this possible. www.mosi.org.uk/

Huge thanks to Jonathan Sanderson at StoryCog for making the video. storycog.com/

Dividing by zero, zero divided by zero and zero to the power of zero — all pose problems!
More links

I talk to Hannah Fry and compare our mathematical investigations into playing Monopoly. I’ve put all my probabilities below.

You can buy a signed copy of Hannahs book on Maths Gear:
mathsgear.co.uk/collections/books/products/signed-copy-of-the-indisputable-existence-of-santa-claus

In the UK you can also get it from Waterstones:
www.waterstones.com/book/the-indisputable-existence-of-santa-claus/dr-hannah-fry/dr-hannah-fry/9780857524607

There is a Kindle edition on Amazon:
www.amazon.com/Indisputable-Existence-Santa-Claus-ebook/dp/B01G96DPWS?_encoding=UTF8

Download the podcast of my BBC Radio4 show, Domestic Science (Ep1) www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02pc9x6/episodes/downloads

In this video I start with how many 256×256 greyscale images are possible and work my way up to the maximum number of possible YouTube videos.

Original question on twitter:
twitter.com/dedwarmo/status/755799688759037953

Here is our radio show on the BBC radio player. Let me know if it does not work for you.
www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07lxqq8/episodes/player

Our Festival of the Spoken Nerd DVD and download:
shop.festivalofthespokennerd.com/

Galaxy M81 image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ESA/Harvard-Smithsonian CfA

Music by Howard Carter
Design by Simon Wright

MATT PARKER: Stand-up Mathematician
Website: standupmaths.com/
Maths book: makeanddo4D.com/
Nerdy maths toys: mathsgear.co.uk/

Matt Parker is awarded 2020 Christopher Zeeman Medal — rel.ink/kdO4xy

my twitter: @tweetsauce
my instagram: electricpants

Sources and links to learn more below!

I’m very grateful to mathematician Hugh Woodin, Professor of Philosophy and Mathematics at Harvard, for taking the time on multiple occasions to discuss this topic with me and help me wrap my (finite) head around it.

I’m also grateful to David Eisenbud, the Director of the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute (MSRI) and professor of mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley, for his help and for connecting me with Hugh Woodin.

And of course, big thanks to Brady Haran who created the “mile of pi” seen in this video and connected me with all these mathematicians in the first place. His channel, Numberphile, is superb: www.youtube.com/user/numberphile

BOOKS related to these topics that I used:

“The Outer Limits of Reason” by Noson S. Yanofsky: amzn.com/0262019353
“Infinity and The Mind” by Rudy Rucker: amzn.com/0691121273
“Roads to Infinity” by John C. Stilwell: amzn.com/1568814666
“More Precisely: The Math You Need to Do Philosophy” by Eric Steinhart: amzn.com/1551119099
“Satan, Cantor and Infinity: Mind-Boggling Puzzles” by Raymond M. Smullyan: amzn.com/0486470369

classic book that helps introduce concept of axioms: “Introduction to the Foundations of Mathematics” by Raymond L. Wilder: amzn.com/0486488209

Hugh Woodin speaking about infinity at the World Science Festival: youtu.be/KDCJZ81PwVM?t=29m45s

Names of large (finite) numbers: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_large_numbers

Geoglyphs:

The biggest number: goo.gl/maps/7GWcpnzo7iG2

Fovant badges: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fovant_Badges

Battalion Park: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battalion_Park

A mile of pi [VIDEO]: www.youtube.com/watch?v=0r3cEKZiLmg

Wikipedia’s great visualization of ordinals out to omega^omega: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Omega-exp-omega-labeled.svg

as seen on: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordinal_number

this is also a good page about ordinals: math.wikia.com/wiki/Ordinal_Number

also: www.cut-the-knot.org/WhatIs/Infinity/Ordinals.shtml

and: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_type and en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Well-order

Axioms:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axiom
www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/30xokb/have_there_been_axioms_that_later_have_been/
philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/5922/what-is-the-difference-between-dogma-and-an-axiom
www.cs.umd.edu/~gasarch/BLOGPAPERS/belaxioms1.pdf
www.cs.umd.edu/~gasarch/BLOGPAPERS/belaxioms2.pdf

THE UNREASONABLE EFFECTIVENSS OF MATHEMATICS IN THE NATURAL SCIENCES
[PDF]: www.maths.ed.ac.uk/~aar/papers/wigner.pdf
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unreasonable_Effectiveness_of_Mathematics_in_the_Natural_Sciences

Large Cardinal game based on 2048: cantorontheshore.blogspot.it/2014/10/one-reinhardt-and-counting.html

Other good resources:

quibb.blogspot.com/2012/01/infinity-first-transfinite-cardinal.html
plato.stanford.edu/entries/set-theory/
cantorsattic.info/Cantor's_Attic
cantorontheshore.blogspot.co.at/2014/09/artemis-fowl-and-large-cardinals_22.html
isomorphism.es/post/10782081422/what-comes-after-infinity-transfinite-arithmetic-and-ord
lukepalmer.wordpress.com/2007/06/14/the-lesser-of-infinitely-many-evils/

MUSIC BY:
www.youtube.com/JakeChudnow
www.audionetwork.com

Join in the Superpermutation effort! The best place to start is the google group:
groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/superpermutators

This is where Robin Houston does his real job: Flourish Data Visualisation
flourish.studio

James Grimes video: Superpermutations — Numberphile
www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJGE4aEWc28

A lower bound on the length of the shortest superpattern
Anonymous 4chan Poster, Robin Houston, Jay Pantone, and Vince Vatter
oeis.org/A180632/a180632.pdf

«The Haruhi Problem»
More formally, «what is the shortest string containing all permutations of a set of n elements?»
mathsci.wikia.com/wiki/The_Haruhi_Problem

Archived 4chan post. If you dont know what 4chan is: click with caution.
warosu.org/sci/thread/S3751105#p3751197

Nathaniel Johnston: «The Minimal Superpermutation Problem»
www.njohnston.ca/2013/04/the-minimal-superpermutation-problem/

Superpermutations by Greg Egan
www.gregegan.net/SCIENCE/Superpermutations/Superpermutations.html

Robins tweet:
«A curious situation. The best known lower bound for the minimal length of superpermutations was proved by an anonymous user of a wiki mainly devoted to anime.»
twitter.com/robinhouston/status/1054637891085918209

LKH: Lin-Kernighan heuristic for solving the traveling salesman problem
akira.ruc.dk/~keld/research/LKH/

CORRECTIONS
— Not yet. Let me know if you spot anything!

Thanks to my Patreon supports who do support these videos and make them possible. Here is a random subset:

Lucie
Thomas Hodnemyr
Euler
Jordan Scales
Håkan Johansson

Support my channel and I can make more maths videos:
www.patreon.com/standupmaths

Music by Howard Carter
Filming and editing by Trunkman Productions
Design by Simon Wright

MATT PARKER: Stand-up Mathematician
Website: standupmaths.com/
Maths book: wwwh.umble-pi.com
Nerdy maths toys: mathsgear.co.uk/

From our Festival of the Spoken Nerd show “Full Frontal Nerdy”. Available here: festivalofthespokennerd.com/dvd/

And these places.
ITUNES: itunes.apple.com/gb/movie/festival-spoken-nerd-full/id1144174820
GOOGLE PLAY: play.google.com/store/movies/details/Festival_of_the_Spoken_Nerd_Full_Frontal_Nerdity?id=H5k3yeJESu8
AMAZON VIDEO: amzn.to/2cqDrmN

Our show in London at the Soho Theatre will be the 11 to 21 January 2017. Full details and tickets: www.sohotheatre.com/whats-on/festival-of-the-spoken-nerd

Our complete listing of up-and-coming shows: festivalofthespokennerd.com/buy-tickets/

CORRECTIONS:
— This is a re-upload with the «Slightly Safer For Schools Soundtrack» audio track from the DVD for class use (the censoring is deliberately blatant/badly done). It takes out one naughty word!

Support my videos on Patreon:
www.patreon.com/standupmaths

Music by Howard Carter
Design by Simon Wright

MATT PARKER: Stand-up Mathematician
Website: standupmaths.com/
Maths book: makeanddo4D.com/
Nerdy maths toys: mathsgear.co.uk/

Some things you probably did not know about 1729 and the Man Who Knew Infinity.

Scan of page from Ramanujan’s Lost Notebook
i.imgur.com/xsfXHUz.jpg

Fermat’s Last Theorem by Simon Singh:
www.amazon.co.uk/Fermats-Last-Theorem-Confounded-Greatest/dp/1841157910/ref=sr_1_1?_encoding=UTF8

Most of the time, the maths in our everyday lives works quietly behind the scenes, until someone forgets to carry a 1 and a bridge collapses or a plane drops out of the sky.
Subscribe for regular science videos: bit.ly/RiSubscRibe

Matts book «Humble Pi» available now: geni.us/9nPhpn3

Matt Parker is a stand-up comedian and mathematician. He appears regularly on TV and online: as well as being a presenter on the Discovery Channel. His YouTube videos have been viewed over 37 million times. Previously a high-school mathematics teacher, Matt visits schools to talk to students about maths as part of Think Maths and he is involved in the Maths Inspiration shows. In his remaining free time, Matt wrote the books Things To Make and Do in the Fourth Dimension and Humble Pi: A Comedy of Maths Errors. He is also the Public Engagement in Mathematics Fellow at Queen Mary University of London.

This talk was filmed in the Ri on 1 March 2019.

— A very special thank you to our Patreon supporters who help make these videos happen, especially:
bestape, Dave Ostler, David Lindo, Greg Nagel, Ivan Korolev, John Pollock, Lester Su, Osian Gwyn Williams, Radu Tizu, Rebecca Pan, Robert Hillier, Roger Baker, Sergei Solovev, and Will Knott
— The Ri is on Patreon: www.patreon.com/TheRoyalInstitution
and Twitter: twitter.com/ri_science
and Facebook: www.facebook.com/royalinstitution
and Tumblr: ri-science.tumblr.com/
Our editorial policy: www.rigb.org/home/editorial-policy
Subscribe for the latest science videos: bit.ly/RiNewsletter

Product links on this page may be affiliate links which means it wont cost you any extra but we may earn a small commission if you decide to purchase through the link.