Chris Dalariva

Things want to be the temperature of everything around it.

So when you pour coffee into the cup, the coffee wants to assume the temperature of the cup and the cup wants to assume the temperature of the coffee?

So one of these mathematical formula things that I find really interesting is, I've heard this explanation before, but I can't recall it.

When you have a lot of people in a room, the chances of people sharing the same birthday, how that works is,

Well, wait a minute, because of course people would think there's 365 days in a year.

So the chances of you and me having the same birthday would be one in 365.

How could it possibly be one out of 20 or a 50% chance of one out of 23?

So it's not that if 23 people were to walk into this room that there's a 50 chance that one of them shares my birthday.

It's that one of all of us share a birthday.

Can you explain the math of randomness in a way that people could grasp?

So left-handedness is a topic I'm interested in because I'm left-handed.

And you know, it's not the worst thing in the world to be left-handed, but it is inconvenient sometimes and difficult sometimes because we live in a right-handed world.

And I've read that left-handed people have a shorter life expectancy than

primarily due to industrial accidents and accidents with tools and things that are made for right-handed people that left-handed people have to use.

But it makes you wonder why left-handed people aren't evolved out.

I mean, I'm glad they're not, but why have them?

Since we're having this conversation in the winter, let's talk about the math of snowflakes.

Well, it's always fun to look at life, different parts of our lives through the lens of math, because often the explanation is so surprising.

I've been talking to Eddie Wu.

He is the head math teacher at Cherrybrook Technology High School in Sydney.