Your Days Are Numbered, March 29, 2012 ***

Your Days Are Numbered – The Maths of Death

By Matt Parker and Timandra Harkness

Where and When: Portico Room, Melbourne Town Hall, March 28 to April 4, 2012

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

Stars:***

Strangely illuminating and unnerving collision of comedy, maths and death.

After 30 minutes of slightly disturbing mathematical jokes about death, my mouth was gaping, my brain was hurting, but I was still listening – and laughing.

Did you know that a ‘micromort’ is the name for a one in a million chance of death, or that by the end of 60 minutes on the Death Clock, the entire audience will be dead?

We learn there is a critical amount of alcohol that makes you cheerful before it all turns ugly and we study graphs indicating the odds of dying by autoerotic asphyxiation, shark attack or bees.

Your Days Are Numbered, performed by Matt, the good-looking maths nerd, and Timandra, the groovy, red-headed Brit, is nerdy humour for statistic-heads – there was even a real mathematician from Florida in the crowd.

The laughs are not riotous but it has novelty value and is strangely illuminating and unnerving.

By Kate Herbert

Funny line: “Canoeing looks the same as taking Ecstasy.”
Newsy tip: Sit up the front and you’ll get to use the calculator, like I did.