Review of The Code and comparison with the GOAT...

This week’s episodes was called Shapes (or as we used to call it before the national curriculum – geometry) The programme once again featured ghostly voiceovers, moody shots and bags of computer generated graphics. Again, like last week, my disclaimer is that the programme is not aimed at me. Having said that I liked this more than the last one though I didn’t see anything I could steal for my teaching. Marcus kicked off the programme at the Devil’s Causeway in Northern Ireland, the natural rock formation that made of hexagonal stones. From this it was off to see some bees use hexagons in their hives and the only number fact was that the angle involved was 120 degrees. Was this the only number mentioned this week? After that we had bubbles, Platonic solids in Neolithic Scotland, soap films and the Munich Olympic Stadium, a stunning cave in Germany made of cubic crystals, non-symmetric snowflakes (they’re not all six sided!), Mandelbrot and fractals, and in particular the guy at Pixar who used fractals to generate mountain scenery. There was also a bit about Jackson Pollock and fractals. I’ve always found the claims of fractal dimension in his paintings to be a bit dubious but I have never had time to investigate them. Comparison with GOAT (GOAT is a sports abbreviation for Greatest Of All Time.) The Code’s blog has a large number of disparaging comments. “Marcus du Sautoy’s first programme in the series “The Code” has tarnished his reputation.”, “Nothing new here except the labelling of this knowledge as The Code.” I can’t find some worse ones that I spotted last week (maybe they were deleted!). Of course comments sections are always full of bile and don’t reflect the majority position — those with...

Review of The Code

In reviewing The Code I should note that this is a TV programme not aimed at me. Nonetheless as a mathematician I do like to see the portrayal of my subject in the number one mass medium. Actually, I’m unsure who the target audience is. At one point pi is introduced slowly over a number of minutes which would indicate that the producers thought that even the most basic ideas could not be assumed. Leaving that minor criticism aside (after all it’s a problem with TV output rather than a specific fault of this programme), what was the programme like? What’s it about? Well, the intro said that it was about answering the question Why is the world the way it is? The precise definition of ‘The Code’ was a bit obscure but we all know they’re talking about maths. The programme began with Marcus du Sautoy pacing around a cathedral at night with an echoing voiceover from a girl. We had fancy graphics, moody lighting, long shadows, strange camera angles and occasional uses of black and white. Hidden in the cathedral was a code, said du Sautoy, and then showed how mathematics showed up in its design. In particular the relation with harmonious combinations of notes. For example the altar divides the nave into a ratio of 8 to 5 which is a minor sixth in music. This episode was about numbers, so primes, pi, i, acceleration due to gravity and a constant associated with a nautilus shell were explored. See the video below for a clip about this last constant. To exemplify the appearance of pi the normal distribution was used. Unfortunately, the idea was to get the daily catch from a fisherman and weigh the fishes. From the mean and variance...

The Code

In a change to my scheduled post I’ll advertise The Code. This is a new TV series presented by Marcus du Sautoy. Judging by the trailer I saw last night the BBC has spent decent amounts of money on it. Leaving aside that it is scheduled in the summer rather than more prestigious autumn time it is good to see a maths/science programme on BBC2 rather than BBC Four. The series starts on Wednesday 29th July, 9pm and will be available later on the iPlayer. The website, http://www.bbc.co.uk/tv/features/code/, contains clips, competitions and other interactive treats. My favourite bit so far is an interesting clip with...