Tomorrow is the start of August, and if you’re anywhere near Edinburgh you’ll be aware that the city is already overrun with musicians, comedians and street performers plying their trade as part of the month-long Fringe festival. If you were wondering whether any of the shows were maths-related, the answer is yes! And we’ve saved you the hassle of searching the Fringe programme website for the word ‘maths’ and related terms – below is an outline of some maths-related shows you might enjoy.

Friend of the site Matt Parker is returning to the Fringe this year with his show Getting Triggy With It: Matt Parker Does The Maths. The show is a tie-in to his recent book, which celebrates the many facets (3) of everyone’s favourite three-sided shape, Love Triangle (although the show itself has relatively little overlap with the book); based on the previews, it’s just a generally fun hour of yet more of Matt being Matt and getting a laugh out of maths.

Recent MathsJam Gathering attendee and stats comedian Merry Martyn is bringing her statistically hilarious show Nerd Mentality to the Fringe, along with fellow nerd and QI Elf Joe Mayo. Nerd Mentality: Duel! To the Death! will feature data, PowerPoint and laughs.

Scouring the Fringe programme has turned up some other mathematical shows, including 10,000 Digits of Pi, in which performer Vinay Sagar attempts to recite 10,000 digits of π. There’s also Excel Comedy and Mathem-antics in which “Excel YouTuber and math addict” David Benaim shares his obsession with maths and spreadsheets.

For something a bit more dramatic, Aether promises to explore “faith, physics and magic in rich theatrical spectacle”. If you’d like to see a mathematical clown show, you’ll want The Mathemagician; and for a dash through some maths history, there’s James Arthur Isn’t a Mathematician and Other Lies.

In the rich tradition of Fringe shows in which people relate their lived experience, there’s Odds Are with storyteller Smita Russell, which blends “myth, medicine, math and memory”. If you’d like to hear a debut stand-up hour from a chartered accountant, you might like James Trickey’s Don’t Count on Me.

For some takes on neurodiversity which might have a slightly mathematical twist, you can see Is There Work on Mars?, a sci-fi tale about a woman with ADHD and dyscalculia. You may also enjoy Cerys Bradley’s Queer Tales for Autistic Folk – a ‘choose your own story telling’ comedy show.

Finally, if you’d like to see academics from Edinburgh Uni doing short stand-up sets about interesting maths, The Stand is putting on a series of events called The Provocateurs, each comprising two sets by researchers. There’s a large range of topics being covered, but we’ve found a couple of maths ones.

Dr Michael Barany plans to talk about a 600-year-old fart joke and how it can explain the essence of mathematics, and is performing twice – once on 2nd August (sold out at time of writing) and again on 21st August. Dr Lars Schewe is also performing, and will be talking about using maths to solve power cuts – that’s on 3rd August, 13th August and 20th August.