That's Numberwang.

I'm just coming down from a week at Women in Number Theory 3 at the Banff Center in Canada, and it was, in a word: amazing. For any of the naysayers in the world who think women lack mathematical aptitude, I challenge them to spend a week with this incredible power corps of research machines. Or better yet, I implore them to enjoy the research proceedings which will be forthcoming.

On an unrelated note, I was just pointed to the most fantastic totally non-mathematical, but actually weirdly mathematical video. It's been around for awhile, so I fear I may be late to the game on this one, but here it is. It's less than two minutes and I promise you'll laugh.

When I watched it, my first though was that I really wish that Mitchell and Webb were my friends IRL. My second thought was that this is exactly how I must look to my calculus students. For example, who of us has not had this very exchange before:

Me: What's sin(0)?
Student: π?
Me: No…
Student: umm...1?
Me: No…
Student: uhhh...0?
Me: [Numberwang!] (I actually say "yes")

And then I imagine that the student feels like, "Yes! I won!" Sometimes I even feel like I'm playing numberwang when I sit in research talks that are way over my head. Like when these crazy analytic number theorists start tearing through an algebraic variety, hacking away with their magical machetes and eventually getting some count of rational points...

That's numberwang.

<3