It has become something of a tradition for the Palazzo delle Esposizioni to host a rich programme of encounters and lectures to tie with its exhibitions, thus offering the public an opportunity to explore some of the issues addressed in the exhibition in greater depth. Thinkers and academics will be enlightening us on the many ways in which numbers and mathematics are far more than just the boring operations of calculus and the abstruse school problems that we may be inclined to think they are.  Using numbers, or taking our cue from them at any rate, we will be discussing such themes as music and art, beauty and war, non-verbal communication and the organisation of society. There may well be some truth in the saying that "if you torture numbers long enough, they will end up confessing anything and everything"!

16 October, 6.30 pm
Giulio Giorello
Probability and Uncertainty.  Mathematics versus prejudice
Mathematics is "a constructive tool, precisely because it is unruly and destructive", the illustrious mathematician Bruno de Finetti wrote back in 1969.  De Finetti was the inventor of the "operational subjective" conception of probability and the theoretician of the foundations of statistics in the 20th century.  Does that sound like a paradox?  It may well do, but to resolve it, all we have to do is to follow... Donald Duck "into of mathemagic land", to quote the title of one of Walt Disney's most popular cartoons.  The fact of the matter is that maths can afford to construct deep and broad theories precisely because it is unscrupulously capable of demolishing any established prejudice without backtracking before any presumed authority, even that of the great mathematicians of the past.  In particular, the history of number in the structures that it has shaped over the centuries and in its application in situations of the empirical world (probability and more besides) has proven to be one of the most powerful tools for the growth of science and the articulation of criticism both in the world of research and in the world of politics.

23 October, 6.30 pm
Luigi Civalleri
Introduction to the Exhibition
Why are numbers so complicated?  When I buy a dress I take size 14, my eyesight is minus two and the interest rate differential stands at 300:  but what do all those numbers refer to? And while we are on the subject, can animals count? Luigi Civalleri, the exhibition's scientific coordinator, will be answering these and many more questions as he discusses the broad outlines of the Numbers.  Everything that counts, from zero to infinity exhibition.

30 October, 6.30 pm
Franco Ghione
Proportions in Mathematics and the Arts
How have mathematics, numbers and the theory of ratios influenced the arts?  This lecture will be offering a number of examples taken from the history of art, music and architecture, allowing the audience to discover the seamless exchange that has occurred in every age between numbers and the labours of mankind's creative vein.

6 November, 6.30 pm
Alberto Perelli
Discreet Presence: Prime numbers
Prime numbers are the atoms that form the base of the numerical system's structure, yet despite their apparent simplicity and the efforts of generations of mathematicians, many problems relating to them still await a solution.  This lecture is designed to acquaint the audience with some of the more interesting properties and the still unresolved problems involving prime numbers.  They have been an object of study for pure mathematicians for hundreds of years, but we shall also be seeing how the situation began to change radically in the 1970s.

13 November, 6.30 pm
Maurizio Codogno
Mathematics and Daily Life
What possible purpose can be served in real, daily life by the maths we learn at school after the four basic arithmetical operations (addition, subtraction, multiplication and division)?  The answer is, an awful lot... as long as we learn how to use it properly.  With mathematics we can identify phony data and figures in the press, we can find our way about in the labyrinth of interest rates and seemingly win-win lotteries, and we can figure out why the other queue in the supermarket is always faster than the one we are in...

27 November, 6.30 pm
Roberto Natalini
The Numbers of Traffic
Traffic may sometimes appear to be chaotic and unpredictable, yet mathematics can help us to gain a better understanding of its complexities and its regularity.  This is because for some years now mathematics has been successfully describing and predicting the movement of groups of individuals, cars, people, animals, bacteria and so forth.  This lecture will be illustrating some of the models that that have recently spawned a number of interesting applications ranging from traffic news in real time to crowd control in public places.

5 December, 6.30 pm
Andrea Frova
Music and Number
Pythagoras discovered that there is a connection between musical notes and numbers:  if the frequency of two notes played together are in a ratio of small integers to one another, the resulting musical cord will be harmonious.  Music may have become increasingly complicated as it has evolved over the centuries, but it has always obeyed this rule, which forms the basis of classical harmony.  Yet numbers have a musical relevance only in their capacity as the representation of physical phenomena which make it easier for our bio-neural apparatus to pick up and decipher the musical message.

11 December, 6.30 pm
Michele Emmer
Imagination and Numbers at the Movies
Mathematics as a source of inspiration to recount something different, to visualise something different, even to imagine different realities and different worlds?  Really?  But then, what has the cinema been doing ever since it was first invented?  It has been imagining new realities, new spaces, new worlds.  Imagination in the movies merges with the imagination of mathematics to produce sometimes surprising results, because in the words of the leading player in François Ozon's In the House, "mathematics never disappoints".

18 December, 6.30 pm
Giorgio Vallortigara e Nicla Panciera
Brains that Count
What are the neuro-biological bases behind our knowledge of number?  Underlying the symbolic and discreet mathematical capabilities that have developed in certain human societies, we will be discovering, embedded in the activity of the nervous system, the far-from-symbolic roots of the representation of numerousness.  Based on an estimate of quantity and the continuum, we find these capabilities even in beings devoid of symbolic language such as tiny infants and animals.

8 January, 6.30 pm
Angelo Guerraggio
Numbers at War
The lecture will be discussing World War I and the scientific knowledge used in the conflict on a previously unknown scale and in a more pervasive manner than ever before, ranging from ballistics and the reworking of ranging tables for cannon to such novelties as aeroplanes, airships and chemical weapons.  Italian mathematicians were involved in military operations and, even before that, in the debate on the inconsistency between taking part in the war effort and scientific internationalism.  The lecture will offer the audience an opportunity to familiarise with a "school" - that of early 20th century Italian mathematics -that was considered to be one of the most important of its day.

15 January, 6.30 pm
Luigi Civalleri
Counting and Writing Numbers: the basis of numeration and body language
Counting on our fingers and using ten as the basis of our numeration may seem like an obvious choice because that is exactly the number of fingers we are born with and the gesture involving extending them one after the other feels totally natural.  Yet it is still a more or less conscious, deliberate choice, and one often dictated by complex cultural motives.  In this lecture we will be seeing how various civilisations both in today's world and in the past have addressed the problem of counting and numeration, often devising ingenious methods for representing numbers with the body and using other bases than ten such as twenty, sixty or even two.

22 January, 6.30 pm
Luisa Girelli
Numbers in Mental Space: How the cognitive sciences reveal the origin and form of mathematical thought
The close tie between numbers and space has been common knowledge for a long time and informs every aspect of mathematical thought.  The association between spatial elaboration and numerical skills has been the subject of a broad scientific debate ever since the last century, resulting in the past twenty years in an impressive amount of experimental research being devoted to understanding its origin and its underlying neuro-cognitive mechanisms.  The lecture will be using a brief overview of the primary multi-disciplinary evidence that has emerged regarding the connection between numbers and space, to illustrate the contribution made by cognitive research to the understanding of numerical skills.

29 January, 6.30 pm
Claudio Bartocci
The Unreasonable Beauty of Numbers
Back in 1960 physicist Eugene Wigner was probing the "unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics":  why on earth should the laws of physics, which describe disparate phenomena, all be subject to the inflexible laws of number?  Yet what seems to be even more mysterious and difficult to explain than the effectiveness of mathematics is its beauty.  Ever since the days of ancient Greece, the discipline has represented an ideal of harmony and perfection, of the elegant and the essential, which has fascinated painters, sculptors, musicians and writers.

5 February, 6.30 pm
Giovanni Filocamo
You Need Never Fear Maths Again
Many of us suffer from the negative effects of a syndrome known as "fear of mathematics" triggered by disappointing experiences at school.  In actual fact, mathematics does not really require an innate talent, we just have to stop thinking that we are incompetent and give free rein to our imagination.  Giovanni Filocomo will be taking an amusing look at daily life, with its full quota of mathematical thought that often goes through our mind without our being aware of it in the slightest.

12 February, 6.30 pm
Alex Bellos
How Life Reflects Numbers and Numbers Reflect Life
Alex Bellos will be illustrating the results of a worldwide survey that he has conducted on people's favourite numbers, explaining the numerical basis of our emotional, psychological and cultural response to numbers.  He will also be showing how simple mathematical ideas can help to explain growth and evolution, using the example of the cellular automaton:  the game of life.


Our special thanks to Gioco del Lotto - Lottomatica


Info
Palazzo delle Esposizioni - Sala Cinema
Admission via steps in via Milano 9a, Rome
ADMISSION FREE WHILE PLACES LAST
Seats assigned from one hour before the start of each encounter / lecture
Reservations may be made by membership card holders only