Matt Parker
Mr Parker is the Public Engagement in Mathematics Fellow at Queen Mary, University of London, and a sell-out comic. In his talk; he made maths really, really fun.
First off he showed off his ability to be able to nearly instantly calculate the cube root of any number (as long as the original number was 2 digit). However I think that I have found how he did this; by using the 'Vedic Maths Trick', which relates the final digit of the number to the cube root. Still very impressive.
He continued by bringing about the topic of Barcodes. He asked a random person in the audience to read out the barcode, and then he calculated (using his very brain heavy trick) the last digit of the code. Then he expanded and revealed that he was actually using the mathematical pattern that barcode readers use, to calculate the final digit. He showed that error checking and error correction has actually made most checkouts and self checkouts possible. He then went on to explain how this is much like text messages. When a symbol such as the letter 'M' is typed, it is converted to binary. The binary equivalent of 'M' is 01001101, where the starting '010' is used to define the letter as upper-case. Text messages, when received by mobile phones, have a mathematical pattern that will allow the receiving mobile to generate lost data if not all of the message was received. He said that text messages actually resemble a simple suduko puzzle where with little parts of missing information, it is able to calculate the remains of the text. However this can only work up to a certain amount of lost data, as there is a point in which the problem becomes unsolvable.
Finally, he showed the audience how all pictures are actually just a 'spreadsheet' because he physically showed us all, a picture of him, made from an excel document. Crazy.
After the talk I went and met him briefly, talking about him on the Youtube Channel 'NumberPhile' and then he signed my calculator "To 'Mitch', Matt Parker", in binary. Awesome :)
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