
My Favorite Theorem
Exploring the most popular and fascinating stops in the mathematical universe.
Kevin Knudson & Evelyn Lamb · Kevin Knudson
About
Join us as we spend each episode talking with a mathematical professional about their favorite result. And since the best things in life come in pairs, find out what our guest thinks pairs best with their theorem.
Latest Episodes
View all 96 episodes
Episode 95 - Kyne Santos
Kyne Santos, a drag queen and mathematics educator living in Canada, is a big fan of the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus. Also hiking.

Episode 94 - Jeremy Alm
Jeremy Alm likes the Rado graph, a weird object that captures all sorts of interesting properties of finite graphs. Also cheese.

Episode 93 - Robin Wilson
Robin Wilson likes the Hopf Index Theorem and we agree. Also, hot fudge.

Episode 92 - Kate Stange
Kate Stange is a number theorist who loves quadratic forms (and who doesn't, really). Her favorite theorem is the bijection between them and ideal classes. Also chocolate.

Episode 91 - Karen Saxe
Karen Saxe is an analyst who spends her days representing mathematics on Capitol Hill. She really likes the isoperimetric inequality and its many uses. Also tennis.

Episode 90 - Corrine Yap
Corrine Yap loves math, graph theory in particular, and also loves to perform her one-person play about Sonya Kovalevskaya. Also, tofu.

Episode 89 - Allison Henrich
Allison Henrich studies knots and her favorite theorem is about how one might unknot a knot. Also, music.

Episode 88 - Tom Edgar
We all know the (probably apocryphal) story of Gauss adding up the first 100 positive integers as a child. Well, Tom Edgar really likes this result and will be happy to tell you about dozens of different ways to prove it. Also, Groundhog Day.

Episode 87 - Tatiana Toro
Tatiana Toro is a geometer and therefore loves the ur-theorem of geometry, "due" to Pythagoras. She also likes to walk.

Episode 86 - Sarah Hart
Gresham Professor of Geometry Sarah Hart likes cycloids and we talk at length about all their fascinating properties. Also, Moby Dick (or The Whale).

Episode 85 - Matthew Kahle
Euler's polyhedral formula continues to amaze Matthew Kahle as he finds it showing up in different places in mathematics. Also, Bach.

Episode 84 - The Students of TCU
Kevin visited Texas Christian University in March and recorded this episode with some math students. Excellent theorems and pairings.

Episode 83 - Cihan Bahran
Cihan Bahran has a popular twitter feed in which he shares surprising theorems. His favorite? Matrix mortality is undecidable.

Episode 82 - Juliette Bruce
Juliette Bruce is an algebraic geometer who loves to think about embedding curves in projective space. Also mountaineering.

Episode 81 - Christopher Danielson
Technically this is a theorem, but it seems so obvious that it's unclear that it needs a proof. In this episode Christopher Danielson points out that polygons have same number of sides as vertices. Many shapes make an appearance.

Episode 80 - Kimberly Ayers
Kimberly Ayers likes dynamics and so obvs her fave theorem is Sharkovskii's result that "period 3 implies chaos." Also taffy.

Episode 79 - Philip Ording
Philip Ording wrote a cool book (you should check it out) and he likes the Erlangen Program. Not really a theorem, but we're not purists around here.

Episode 78 - Daina Taimina
Daina Taimina is famous for her adventures in mathematical crocheting, but her favorite theorem comes from Desargues. She also likes to travel.

Episode 77 - Tien Chih
Tien Chih loves combinatorics, which means he really loves proving things by induction. In this episode we have a good time learning about this incredibly useful technique in mathematics.

Episode 76 - Math Students of CSULA
We are joined by a group of math students at Cal State University in Los Angeles for a diverse collection of theorems and pairings.