Prof Harold Thimbleby

Professor, Department of Computer Science, Swansea University.

Synopsis

Title-- "B- for The da Vinci Code"

Dan Brown's 'The da Vinci Code' was a publishing phenomenon, not least because of its inaccurate and controversial recasting of early Christian history. Its science is inaccurate too. 'The da Vinci Code' pretends to be fact: it even has a page explicitly saying the substantial background is fact. This talk shows how to get the science right, whether you are writing novels, student projects or research papers: we start with an example of bees and Fibonacci numbers, and end up discussing how to do modern science well.

Titles and descriptions

Press On

From cash machines to mobile phones, from games to medical devices... we can't do anything without pressing a button. How are interactive devices designed to be usable, what goes wrong with them, and how will things get better in the future?

This distinguished lecture will be of interest to anybody who has wondered how devices are designed, why sometimes they are so frustrating, and how future devices will get better.

Prof Harold Thimbleby has just published his latest book, Press On (MIT Press, 2007).

An exciting new user interface

Handheld calculators are very familiar, but they are hard to use reliably - do you know what % does or how to use the memory? We have invented a completely new sort of calculator that is great fun and very easy to use, and much more powerful. People smile and laugh when they use it! Better still, when we used it in math exams, students scored 100% instead of the 60% when using their own standard handheld calculators.

This interactive lecture will demonstrate the new calculator and explain its design principles. The lecture will be of interest to anyone using computers, handhelds, etc, and it will be controversial for teachers, students and parents!

For further queries contact:

Prateek Raj

Manager, Lecture Series

Techfest 2008

+91 98201 16174

prateek[at]techfest[dot]org