I enjoy sharing mathematics with a wide range of audiences, from undergraduates encountering new ideas to fellow researchers. My blog post on the “onion constant,” a new mathematical constant which arises from trying to make onion slices as even as possible, has entered popular discourse with coverage in media such as:

• The New York Times, spotlighting Chef Kenji López-Alt’s curiosity around how to chop an onion optimally, and how my mathematical work refines his idea.
• The Pudding: Dicing an Onion, the Mathematically Optimal Way, featuring an interactive exploration of onion-cutting techniques and highlighting the “onion constant.”
• Daily Mail, which gave broad visibility to the mathematics of cutting onions.

Colloquium, Seminar, Talks

I offer talks that are:

• Accessible. I design talks for general mathematical audiences with no need for prerequisites beyond multivariable calculus.
• Engaging. I blend curiosity-driven storytelling with rigorous mathematics. I also try to show the joy of doing mathematics for fun.

Some featured topics include:

• The Onion Constant. I’ll tell the story of how a discussion at a gathering of friends lead to global attention of the joy of mathematics, with all the glorious mathematical details thrown in!
• The Mathematics of Shiny Hunting in Pokemon. An introduction to many probability distributions through the lens of shiny hunting in Pokemon, this talk will catch your students’ attention. I’ll even wear my yellow Pikachu shoes, or Pikashoes, as I call them.
• The Shape of Rythym. This is an accessible introduction to my research on a Fourier Transform for non-uniformly sampled data. The talk features a lot of interactive elements to and assumes only calculus as a background.

Contact Me

I would be delighted to collaborate with your department. Please reach out via email to drspoulsen@gmail.com.