Marcus du Sautoy has 3 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 2 narrators, with an average listener rating of 4.5★ across 3 ratings. The most-rated is The Creativity Code.
The Creativity Code
Summary
The award-winning author of The Music of the Primes explores the future of creativity and how machine learning will disrupt, enrich, and transform our understanding of what it means to be human. Can a well-programmed machine do anything a human can - only better? Complex algorithms are buying our groceries, picking our partners, and driving our investments. They can navigate more data than a doctor or lawyer and act with greater precision. For many years we've taken solace in the notion that they can't create. But now that algorithms can learn and adapt, does the future of creativity belong to machines too? It is hard to imagine a better guide to the bewildering world of artificial intelligence than Marcus du Sautoy, a celebrated Oxford mathematician whose work on symmetry in the ninth dimension has taken him to the vertiginous edge of mathematical understanding. In The Creativity Code he considers what machine learning means for the future of creativity. Programs like Deep Dream produce drip paintings that could fool students of Jackson Pollock; Deep Jazz composes music in the style of Duke Ellington. But do these programs just mimic, or do they have what it takes to create? Du Sautoy argues that to answer this question, we need to understand how the algorithms that drive them work - and this brings him back to his own subject of mathematics, with its puzzles, constraints, and enticing possibilities. Where most recent books on AI focus on the future of work, The Creativity Code moves us to the forefront of creative new technologies and offers a more positive and unexpected vision of our future cohabitation with machines.
©2019 Marcus du Sautoy (P)2019 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
A Brief History of Mathematics
Summary
This 10-part history of mathematics reveals the personalities behind the calculations: the passions and rivalries of mathematicians struggling to get their ideas heard. Professor Marcus du Sautoy shows how these masters of abstraction find a role in the real world and proves that mathematics is the driving force behind modern science. He explores the relationship between Newton and Leibniz, the men behind the calculus; looks at how the mathematics that Euler invented 200 years ago paved the way for the internet and discovers how Fourier transformed our understanding of heat, light and sound. In addition, he finds out how Galois’ mathematics describes the particles that make up our universe, how Gaussian distribution underpins modern medicine and how Riemann’s maths helped Einstein with his theory of relativity. Finally, he introduces Cantor, who discovered infinite numbers; Poincaré, whose work gave rise to chaos theory; G.H. Hardy, whose work inspired the millions of codes that help to keep the internet safe, and Nicolas Bourbaki, the mathematician who never was. The BBC Radio 4 series looking at the people who shaped modern mathematics, written and presented by Marcus du Sautoy.
©2020 Marcus du Sautoy (P)2020 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd
The Great Unknown
Summary
A captivating journey to the outer reaches of human knowledge
Ever since the dawn of civilization, we have been driven by a desire to know - to understand the physical world and the laws of nature. But are there limits to human knowledge? Are some things simply beyond the predictive powers of science? Or are those challenges the next big discovery waiting to happen?
In The Great Unknown, one of the world's most beloved mathematicians takes us into the minds of science's greatest innovators as he probes the many deep mysteries we have yet to solve. He reminds us that major breakthroughs were often ridiculed at the time of their discovery and takes us on a whirlwind tour of seven frontiers of knowledge, where scientists are grappling with the unknown. Can you locate consciousness in the brain? Is our universe infinite? What is dark energy made of? What happens to time in space? Is it possible to beat ageing?
At once exhilarating and mind bending, The Great Unknown will challenge you to think in new ways about every aspect of the known world. It invites us to consider big questions - about who we are and the nature of God - that even the most creative scientists have yet to answer definitively.
©2017 Marcus du Sautoy (P)2017 Penguin Audio