Simple City  

Pick’s theorem is a simple, beautiful, and usful fact of elementary geometry. It should be much better known than it is! In fact, I have half a mind that it should be on the A-level (high school) syllabus.

Less famous – but equally wonderful – are Ehrhart polynomials, which are what you get when you try to lift Pick’s theorem into higher dimensions. Though geometrically intuitive, they quickly lead into deep mathematical waters. They’re also valued as tools in optimisation problems and in other areas of computer science (I’m told).

This afternoon I gave a – hopefully fairly accessible – talk on these topics. The slides are available here.

(Update: PDF of slides here).