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.