Adam Spencer live on stage

Adam Spencer’s new career appears to be being Adam Spencer, and it must be said he’s very good at it, so seeing him live on stage may seem like nothing new. But in addition to being MC for any event involving a bit of thinking, he’s pouring out maths books. Just in time for Christmas he’s adding World of Numbers and Enormous Book of Numbers to his stable and he’s going to be talking maths, puzzles and other stuff live on stage in November.

Adam Spencer’s Big Book of Numbers is a fun compendium of stuff about numbers – it treads the fine line between informative and entertaining with aplomb. From a distance it seems to have been a success, and that’s an achievement in itself for a book about maths. So I’m looking forward to his new books.

Anyway, Adam is going to be live on stage at the Cremorne Orpheum on 5 November: “Australia’s funniest and most famous mathematician is back with a brilliant new book, crammed with more of the math’s [sic] facts and problems that delight us all. An evening for young and old – for anyone who’s ever wondered how things work, who loves puzzles and numbers, or it just plain curious about the amazing world around us.”

That sounds fabulous, although the quibbler in me has a couple of problems with the advertising screed: the first is the errant apostrophe (sorry the quibbler has been joined by the editor); the second, and much more significant, is that Adam while wonderful, should not be Australia’s most famous mathematician. That should be Terry Tao, who with all respect to Adam, is a serious hunk of mathematician. It is almost certainly true, though, that Adam Spencer is Australia’s funniest mathematician.

But quibbling aside Adam Spencer, live, 6:30pm, Thursday 5 November. It should be enormous.