Mathematics and Juggling

You may (or may not) be asking yourself, how did I get into math? Probably not… but anyway, there is one man and one man alone who is responsible for getting me interested math, and his name is Colin Wright.

During the summer when I was 16, my school put on “Math week”. Now I can see you going “*snigger* how rubbish is that?!” but there was a free trip to  big theme park involved. So you’d probably have gone too. On one of the days Colin was coming to give a talk entitled “Juggling: Theory and Practice”. I thought, “This is a small price to pay to ride rollercoasters until I hurl”. I couldn’t have been more wrong. All I can remember about the talk was I was totally glued for about the hour he was talking. He juggled whilst going through ideas and proofs about how the balls interacted with each other and time. It’s a perfect example of how fun and creative mathematics really is beyond school.

His website is here: http://www.solipsys.co.uk/new/ColinWright.html

There is a much more in depth explanation of the talk on his website, so have a read.