Alex Bellos: Your Favorite Number
The Story Collider
Story Collider, Inc.
4.4 • 824 Ratings
🗓️ 26 December 2014
⏱️ 17 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Alex Bellos is surprised that people ask him what his favorite number is, so he decides to ask everyone what theirs is. Alex Bellos is the author of the popular science bestsellers The Grapes of Math and Here's Looking at Euclid. In a previous life he was the Guardian's South America correspondent, based in Rio, where he wrote Futebol: the Brazilian Way of Life, a book on Brazilian football. He also ghost-wrote Pele's autobiography. Alex blogs on maths for the Guardian and presents maths documentaries for BBC Radio 4. His YouTube clip on how to cut a cake has had more than 6.5 million views.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | A science story, huh? |
| 0:04.0 | Is NYU scientist the... |
| 0:06.0 | It felt... |
| 0:07.0 | I felt... |
| 0:08.0 | ...and I just thought, well... |
| 0:10.0 | It was that golden moment... |
| 0:12.0 | Because science was on my side. |
| 0:15.0 | ...theid... Hey everyone, I'm Ben Lilly, and welcome to the Story Collider, where we bring you true personal stories about science. |
| 0:32.3 | We have live shows coming up January 6th in Seattle, January 10th in New York City, January 12th in Maine, and January 28th in London. |
| 0:40.3 | Strikeclider.org for more details. |
| 0:42.9 | This week's story is from Alex Bellows. |
| 0:44.9 | The story was recorded in November 2014 at the Book Club in London. |
| 1:09.6 | After a decade and a half of being a journalist, in 2010 I published my first math book, Alex's Adventures in Numberland or in the US, he's looking at Euclid. |
| 1:16.0 | Now, the book changed my life in three different ways. |
| 1:21.3 | Firstly, I married my editor. |
| 1:23.4 | There she is, sitting on the front row. |
| 1:24.9 | Woo! |
| 1:27.4 | I bet you don't think I'd say that. |
| 1:38.4 | Secondly, friends who until that moment had expressed no interest at all in my arithmetical abilities started to insist that I always calculate the bill at the end of a meal. |
| 1:45.7 | Now, this was a role I really quite liked because it's amazing how impressed some people are |
| 1:51.9 | by the ability to divide by two. |
| 1:56.8 | The third thing was that my friends, acquaintances, basically anyone who is introduced to me as this is the maths book guy, they all wanted to ask me the same question. |
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