How should a democracy choose its representatives? How can you stop a pandemic from sweeping the world? How do computers learn to play chess? The answers to all these questions can be found in geometry.

The word ‘geometry,’ from the Greek, means ‘measuring the world.’ But geometry doesn’t just measure the world – it explains it. In this whip-smart exploration of the modern discipline, mathematician Jordan Ellenberg will show us how.

If you’re like most people, geometry is a dimly-remembered exercise, handed down from the ancients, that you gladly left behind in school. It seemed to be a tortuous way of proving some fact about triangles that was obvious to you in the first place. But that tiny part of geometry has as much to do with he fast-moving modern discipline as conjugating a verb has to do with a great novel.

In this livestream event, Sunday Times-bestselling author Jordan Ellenberg will reveal the geometry underneath some of the most important scientific, political, and philosophical problems we face, from the spread of coronavirus to rise of machine learning.