Return to Answer

I have given talks about mathematics to non-mathematicians, for example to a bunch of marketing people. Supplemental: to see an example of a talk of mine that was given to a general audience, see my TEDx talk "Zeroes" (with supplemental material). The talk lasted 15 minutes and it took me about two weeks to prepare.

1. If the audience does not understand you it is all in vain.
2. You should interact with your audience. Ask them questions, talk to them. A lecture is a boring thing.
3. Pick one thing and explain it well. The audience will understand that in 10 minutes you cannot explain all of math. The audience will not like you if you rush through a number of things and you don't explain any one of them well. So an introductory sentence of the form "Math is a vast area with many uses, but in these 10 minutes let me show you just one cool idea that mathematicians have come up." is perfectly ok.
4. A proof of something that seems obvious does not appeal to people. For example, the proof of Kepler's conjecture about sphere packing is a bad example because most people won't see what the fuss is all about. So Kepler's conjecture would be a bad example.
5. You are not talking to mathematicians. You are not allowed to have definitions, theorems or proofs. You are not allowed to compute anything.
6. Pictures are your friend. Use lots of pictures whenever possible.
7. You need not talk about your own work, but pick something you know well.
8. Do not pick examples that always appear in popular science (Fermat's Last Theorem, the Kepler conjecture, the bridges of Koenigsberg, any of the 1 million dollar problems). Pick something interesting but not widely known.

I have given talks about mathematics to non-mathematicians, for example to a bunch of marketing people. To see an example of a talk of mine that was given to a general audience, see my talk Zeros, given in August 2024 at SMRI, based on a previous talk TEDxUL "Zeros". These talks took weeks to prepare.

1. If the audience does not understand you it is all in vain.
2. You should interact with your audience. Ask them questions, talk to them. A lecture is a boring thing.
3. Pick one thing and explain it well. The audience will understand that in 10 minutes you cannot explain all of math. The audience will not like you if you rush through a number of things and you don't explain any one of them well. So an introductory sentence of the form "Math is a vast area with many uses, but in these 10 minutes let me show you just one cool idea that mathematicians have come up." is perfectly ok.
4. A proof of something that seems obvious does not appeal to people. For example, the proof of Kepler's conjecture about sphere packing is a bad example because most people won't see what the fuss is all about. So Kepler's conjecture would be a bad example.
5. You are not talking to mathematicians. You are not allowed to have definitions, theorems or proofs. You are not allowed to have long chains of computational steps or reasoning.
6. Pictures are your friend. Use lots of pictures whenever possible.
7. You need not talk about your own work, but pick something you know well.
8. Do not pick examples that always appear in popular science (Fermat's Last Theorem, the Kepler conjecture, the bridges of Koenigsberg, any of the 1 million dollar problems). Pick something interesting but not widely known.

I have given talks about mathematics to non-mathematicians, for example to a bunch of marketing people. Supplemental: to see an example of a talk of mine that was given to a general audience, see my TEDx talk "Zeroes" (with supplemental material). The talk last 15 minutes and it took me about two weeks to prepare.

I have given talks about mathematics to non-mathematicians, for example to a bunch of marketing people. Supplemental: to see an example of a talk of mine that was given to a general audience, see my TEDx talk "Zeroes" (with supplemental material). The talk lasted 15 minutes and it took me about two weeks to prepare.

I have given talks about mathematics to non-mathematicians, for example to a bunch of marketing people. In my experience the following points are worth noting:

I have given talks about mathematics to non-mathematicians, for example to a bunch of marketing people. Supplemental: to see an example of a talk of mine that was given to a general audience, see my TEDx talk "Zeroes" (with supplemental material). The talk last 15 minutes and it took me about two weeks to prepare.

In my experience the following points are worth noting: