About
Relatively Prime is a series of eight shows all about the stories behind mathematics that was funded through Kickstarter.
OK, now that the boring description is out of the way, let us get to the real deal. Relatively Prime is a series of eight shows all about the stories behind mathematics that Samuel Hansen dreamt up in an extreme bout of egotism and delusion of grandeur where he spent too long listening to Radio Lab, This American Life, and Snap Judgment and began to think, “Hey, I could do that.” After sitting on the idea and letting it stew for a couple of months, Samuel found himself done with graduate school and planless. So, instead of going out and searching for a job like most of fellows were doing at that time Samuel logged onto Kickstarter and submitted the project. It was promptly rejected. Samuel cried a bit, then made some changes and this time his submission was accepted. The first few days went very well and Samuel began to believe his project would succeed, he was quickly disabused of that notion as the slope of his support graph was nearly flat. By the time the final day approached Samuel was already searching around for gainful employment, having given up on the Kickstarter weeks earlier. Then he checked his phone on that final day. It announced that he had some 50 twitter mentions and dozens of new emails, and all of it was about Relatively Prime. He jumped out of bed and checked his computer, where that support curve now had a slope that was getting steadily steeper every minute. By the end of the day the project was successfully funded, and Samuel had a whole new problem: How was he actually going to pull this off?
After a couple of months of planning out travel and shows and topics and interviews that he would do, Samuel hopped on a plane in the beginning of November. By the time a Greyhound bus dropped him off at home in April, Samuel had interviewed a Fields Medalist, a composer, and a ground breaking AI researcher. He had been on 2 continents, in 4 countries, and a 74 hour bus ride. There are many stories from this trip that Samuel is happy to share, just send him an email. Once he was home Samuel was itching to start production. It took months, but by the end of August 2012 Samuel believed that the episodes were complete and that he was ready to release them to the world.
Samuel has written the following pieces related to Relatively Prime:
Relatively Prime, All in a Name
Robert Schneider, Mathematical Musician/Musical Mathematician
People who have been kind enough to write about Relatively Prime:
boingboing
The Aperiodical (2)
O’Reilly Radar
Plus Magazine
Adafruit
Mathmunch (2)
The Math Less Traveled
howthebodyworks
MatthewMaddux Education
Room 196, Hilbert’s Hotel
Tony’s Math Blog
miscellania
my masterpiece, v1.0
MathBlog
Mr. Reid
Math Techniques & Strategies
Tanya Khovanova’s Math Blog