New success with Gaming Café at Culture Night
The Department’s Gaming Cafe in the Botanical Garden was well attended from 18 to 24, where the audience listened to the wise lectures about games, opportunities and strategies - or tested the theories at the café's gaming tables.
Three professors in a Rock-Paper-Scissors contest
Culture Night is an evening each autumn were Copenhagen bustles with life, entertainment, sense experiences and adventures for children and adults of all ages. Museums, libraries, educational establishments, theatres, musical venues, churches and many other institutions representing art and culture open their doors to the public.
Friday 10 October 2014 the Department of Mathematical Sciences participated with a "Gaming Cafe" in the Botanical Garden. The audience heard the professors Mogens Steffensen, Søren Eilers and Rolf Poulsen talk about mathematical based winning strategies in sport games and board games.
After the talks mathematical students were helping people to use the strategies at the gaming tables. Many tried to improve their winning chances in Scrabble, Wordfeud, Roulette and the popular game “Pass the Pig”.
The Gaming Café this year opened a Chess Corner, where many tried to solve a chess-puzzle (mat in one move) and were beaten in Speed Chess by Johannes Heiny, a PhD student at the Department of Mathematical Sciences. Johannes is a former Austrian youth champion, and performed impressively throughout the Culture Night.
Botanical Garden, which is part of the University of Copenhagen, offered among other things a ballet on the lake and lighting effects in the Palm House. And behind the Palm House were a tent city with the popular Biological Department with their animals and plants, the Øresund Aquarium, where you could pet a fish – and the Mathematical Gaming Café.
21.051 people visited the Botanical Gardens at the Culture Night. It's hard to say how many visited the Gaming Cafe, but we served about 500 cups of coffee/tea and 15 kg. cookies.
