The Function Room

This week I do some basic drills, some shuttling runs on the massive world of statistics in sport. Former accountant Paul McDonald has many hats, but he is now a sports stat specialist, company founder and originator of the expected transfer values algorithm, trying to bring some sense back to crazy world and numbers of football transfers fees.

He talks me through xG – the expected goals phenomenon that you may have heard thown around, expected Threat and expected Transfer Value.

Along the way we discuss players as different as Juan Riquelme and Denis Irwin and wh...

This week I’m joined by another returnee to the function Room, a lecturer at the Maynooth University Department of Geography and we’re talking about voting systems and the numbers they generate. We catch an STV, - single transferrable vote, FPTP -first past the post and the second chance of the French system.

We find out why Eurovision is a giant democratic experiment and ultimately why a vote in Ireland goes on an adventure.

This week in the function room, the hole shebang. A bit about Black Holes with Dr John Regan. Royal Society - SFI University Research Fellow in the Department of Theoretical Physics. we caefully scrape the surface of the topic of black holes without hopefully getting sucked in and destroyed by the weight of the topic.

John tells me how he got into black holes why he can't really get out, how Einstein nearly got it wrong and then got it right with a little help from his friends, what the LIGO saw, what it's like as a...

My guest is Katie Steckles, Mathematician, presenter and communicator. She has written seven books about mathematics, hosts the brilliant Mathemetical Objects podcast where she and her co presenter Peter Rowlatt discuss with their guests, very ordinary objects, and sometimes weird ones, and the mathematics behind and because of that object.

The kind of podcast I would love to have made if i were cleverer and had thought of it. It's a very interesting chat about the arbelos, kalaidocycles, bringing the stories of mathematics to light, the skill of not knowing what you are doing, Euclid's brother, Pythagoras's...

Matt Kenzie is one of the Science advisors on the hit Netflix show Three Body Problem.

The show and the book is about what happens when aliens want to say hi. Aliens called the San Ti, from a planet in a system of three Suns orbiting each other. They are a three body problem and chaos ensues for the San-Ti.

3BP is made by Weiss and Benioff, so we talk about Game of Thrones naturally, the three body problem, nano-slicing, quantum tunnelling and just how close to life the life of the phd student is...

This week in the function room, Census Sensibility with . A glimpse into the work of Ireland's Central Statistic office, the CSO with Statistician Jess Coyne. Yes it's been a little while since the last one. The Easter break and childminding and whatnot intervened and I took a count and there wasn't enough hours in the day. But I'm back now and this time we're talking about what questions you ask and how you ask them to get the numbers that represent what's going on in a country.

Another episode title Im jealous of becuase I didn't pick it, it's the work of Keith Houston a writer and software engineer who has made a habit of writing about things that are there in plain sight. He has written about the history of punctuation, a book about the book and last year a book about the history of the pocket calculator.

There's lots of interesting nuggets in this episode including how an ant counts, who counts with their genitals, the unlikely role a Tea company played in making calculators, what happens when there's an actual bug...

My first replay! Given what we've been hearing about Google and their Gemini code disaster and bias and all sorts, time to revisit one of my favourite episodes, with Cathy O'Neil author of Weapons of Math destruction and has a company that audits algorithms.

At some stage in a futurstic world when you're in trouble with the Algo Cops you'll wish you listened to Cathy.

Eagle-eyed or maybe that should be bat-eared listeners may note that I used to do a lot more preamble with the podcast and lean more heavily on my daughters for...

This week my guest is Hannah Daly, Professor of Sustainable Energy at University College Cork. It's the third of a trilogy about energy - a sort of trilogy there was another episode in between (a sort of Rogue One of maths/energy episodes)
While the other two talk about where we get energy -magical molecules- or store them -stone batteries- this one focuses on working out how much we'll need using mathematical models.

My guest is John Fardy, presenter of Newstalk's Radio (and GoLoud's) movie show ScreenTime. He has watched a lot of movies which means, statistically he's seen a lot of mathematics in movies. Therefore a lot of tall blackboards, a lot of troubled geniuses who struggle to talk to people but speak to numbers with ease, a lot of running around with pieces of paper that have the Eureka moment on them. We chat about his favourite mathematical movies and also what movies would we like to see made.

A look at some of the stories behind the massive sums of an energy revolution.

My guest is David Volts, energy journalist and writer of the Volts newsletter and host of the volts podcast. After Catherine Sheridan's H2 Oh! last week, this is the second of what looks to be an inadvertent energy trilogy. (Or enilogy or trinergy. No doubt that's been trademarked already)

David Roberts has been writing and talking for years about the challenges but also the incredibly cool stuff happening in the biggest equation the world has ever seen: The terrajoules of...

Catherine Sheridan, an engineer and systems thinker who after 20 years working on water, roads, energy is focussed on a tiny powerful magic little molecule: Hydrogen.

We talk 5th year Physics experiments, making the world a fairer place, why the poetry of Robert Graves and the short stories of David Foster Wallace can teach us about the maths of molecules, why we need silver shrapnel rather than silver bullets, a little plug for mygug a magic egg made in cork that turns your food waste into heat and why we need to start hiring carbon accountants.

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Function Room 39 There's Been a Breakthrough with TJ Hegarty.

TJ Hegarty is the founder of Breakthrough Maths an online maths tutoring company based in Ireland. We talk about small farmers, not letting your father down, wanting to sell butter giving up in the Far East, changing your mind and deciding to give up your job and not sell butter in the Far East, semantic memory, off the grid tutors and where he wants his next breakthrough to be.

Warning: This episode contains strong elements of Corkness

13th December, on the day of the earliest sunset in Dublin, my guest is Eibhear OHanlon, who more than anyone else knows how to call it a day. He has been the curator of theauldsthretch twitter account, now on mastodon and bluesky for 8 years. Each day he lets gives people a bit of hope and a warning about the length of their day. We talk about earth tilts, the weirdness of leap years, how do you know the sun has set, the importance of a smidge.

This week we look at the maths of conspiracy theories with physicist, cancer researcher, science writer author of the Award-winning The Irrational Ape why flawed logic puts us all at risk. how to tell if one most likely isn't true, a scary thing called Availability Heuristic, why it's not sugar is making those children hyper at the party, what you think when you first hear the name "Freddy Starr"

Kjartan (pronounced Jartan) Poskitt is a maths book phenomenon. Author of Murderous Maths a series of, funny books for children about maths, they've been published in 25 countries. We talk about duels, how a fencing teacher went looking for pi, Archimedes, the magic stall at York market and the importance of having your own lair.

The mysterious world of the Riemann Hypothesis. This is about an unsolved problem relating to prime numbers.

Bernhard Riemann was a German mathematician who lived in the 19th century and along with a lot of work on geometry also looked at prime numbers.

If you're finding this hard to grasp don't worry. Me too. And this episode is not just about this, it's about the nature of things that are unsolved and why the search for solutions itself is important. My guest is Dr Alex Kontorovich professor of Mathematics at Rutgers university in New Jersey...

My guest is Joanna Donnelly meteorologist and author of From Malin Head to Mizen Head, a lovely book about the almost meditative experience that is Irish Sea Area Forecast. Hers is the voice Irish radio listeners will hear last thing at night and first thing in the morning. We talk Hecto Pascals, my favourite of all the Pascals, how maths finds some patterns on this giant sphere of ours and why its best to give bad news first.

Climate Worrier - the maths of Climate Change.

I talk to mathematiciand a man wading kneed deep in the climate models, Chris Budd. Professor of Applied Mathematics at the University of Bath, He takes me painstakingly -but not painfully- through the key Big Numbers that you should know about when it comes to climate change. We recorded this a couple of years ago during Maths Week 2023 and guess what, it's still an issue! WHo knew?

(Apologies for sound quality on this, I have a slight Long Wave Radio sound about me, just it was a...

This week it's the maths of puzzles, and how to get wrap your brain around the fact that the answer isn't obvious. Rob Eastaway is my guest- the first returning guest. He has a book out called Headscratchers - a compendium of puzzles from the last five years of the New Scientist. And he's over in Ireland for Mathsweek. (check out mathsweek.ie). And given the weekend that was in it, we really have to do a snippet on the maths of rugby.

this week in the function room, It's in our Nature - the fascinating world of biomimicry

My guest is Kathyrn Parkes, a technologist with a career spanning nearly 3 decades in designing products and an expert in User Experience. She tells me about what we can learn from nature, the stigmergy of termites, why ants don't have a boss, the benefits of hippo sweat, but also some unusual stuff too.

this week in the function room, It's Anyone's Guess - the maths of guesswork

David Malone of Maynooth University and the Hamilton Institute. I ride the wave of ignorance through some big topics like Information theory, Entropy, what makes a good password and how hard it would be to figure out what I had for breakfast.

But first, I notice David has that all important mathematician background behind him in the interview - a white board with lots of squiggly symbols. i have to ask

The maths of symmetry.

Hi it’s me Colm O’Regan. The function room is back after a little summer break and my guest is Pauline Mellon, professor of mathematics at UCD

She wants to talk about symmetry and I’m glad she did. She brings me on a tour of maths, religion, biology, art, chemistry, AI and naturally of course town planning.

The baffling arithmetic of Dereliction. I talk to Jude Sherry and Frank O’Connor of Derelict Ireland who ask the very simple question about an equation that makes no sense: Why is it that there are tens of thousands of people who need a home and tens of thousand of empty buildings that could be homes. Although specifically about Ireland, this is a question that could be asked anywhere.

Function Room 27 A Sense Of Ounce – The absolutely fascinating history of one of the most important hallmarks of our existence - how and why we measure things. James Vincent has written a book, Beyond Measure about it and he joins me to talk about this thing we completely take for granted that has changed the world, been part of revolutions, where the metre is stored and also the very strange world of anti-metric guerillas.

My guest is author of Chums, Simon Kuper about how a small cabal of Oxford chums managed to take over British politics. And from his book just how crap an Oxford and Eton education could be and you can still make it to the top. Along the way we learn what happens when a generation of leaders neither has a clue nor gives a toss about science and maths, the curious case of Jacob Rees Mogg, why Boris Johnson has been an accidental anarchist. what the French for chums is.

The maths of Criminology. With Ian Marder, Assistant Professor of Criminology at Maynooth University. We talk about statistics and randomized control studies, and bias and how crime always seems worse than it is, why you should get on with your neighbours and to build the ideal justice system

My guest is Dr Muireann Lynch of the economic and social research institute here in Ireland. She very carefully guides me an idiot on my first tour of the c-word. Carbon. How much it costs to use it, how much it costs, the maths of optimisation, Lagrange multipliers, carbon offsets, what happens when carbon has an infinite price. Warning – this contains traces of calculus that some listeners may find upsetting. But stick with it and we eventually get onto lighter topics like making twixes or other nougat-biscuit equivlants and then of course the end of habitable earth.

John Butler is a mathematician turned computational neuroscientist, a professor of maths and statistics at TU Dublin who looks at the brain mathematically and tries to figure out why the brain does what it does We talk about the senses, why it’s good to get your questions from a child, what an neural network ‘cares about’, lots of stuff but first of all, what is a computational neuroscientist. Find out more about John and his work here: https://johnsbutler.netlify.app/

Normally I try and come up with an apt pun but I couldn’t possibly come up with anything better than the title of my guest Sarah Hart’s book. She has written Once Upon A Prime, a very enjoyable read and listen about the many links between maths and literature and myth and poetry. We talk about why giants as we know them can’t exist, the 19th century obsession with statistics, the maths of Ulysses and Moby Dick and taking an idea for a walk.

The mathematics of art or the art of mathematics whichever. My guest is teacher, artist, mathematician,m tiktok star, Ayliean MacDonald the only one with that name in the world we think. We talk about the usual things people talk about: aperiodic tiles, Japanese Hitomezashi stitching, L-chair triominals, toilet paper, cozy-gaming and the meditative power of drawing lots of straight lines in a bullet journal. She’s fascinating. Give it a play.

This week Robert Boyle, born in Ireland in the 17th century was one of the world's great scientists. I'm talking about him with Eoin Gill, Eoin Gill is a director of Calmast STEM Engagement Centre at South East Technological University, who likes Robert Boyle so much he made an entire summer school about him. Boyle was a massive deal in the scientific revolution of the 17th century, and his work laid the groundwork for modern chemistry, a founder of the Royal Society, part of a list of big scientific cheeses like Newton and Kepler who discovered the universe was a...

My guest is Alan O’Reilly, about his hobby weather forecasting. I first met him when he was on my RTE Radio Show Colm O’Regan Wants A Word. But time constraints meant I don’t think we got to talk for the recommended daily weather talk intake of two hours. Alan lives in County Carlow, in the southern midlands of Ireland from where he observes all the weather that the weather can throw at him. We talk about the hot topic at the moment which is of course snow-drizzle called graupel, we talk about not-hearing-the-weather-forecast-anxiety, being lost in the snow...

Welcome back to the function room with me Colm O’Regan. This week, it's ChatGPT. The latest thing that makes people starting dropping the phrase AI into small talk. ChatGPT and all the Ais are of huge interest to my guest. Conrad Wolfram. He’s kind of a big deal. Strategic and international director of Wolfram Research which makes Mathematica the computational software and nearly 4 decades in the area of computational education, Conrad has written The maths fix, about how AI will, or should make the maths we study in school very different. We talk steam engines, democracy and poems abou...

My guest is Rob Eastaway. Author of many books which make maths more interesting and accessible. He also has a podcast called Puzzling Maths with Andrew Jeffrey which you should check out if by some miracle you’re not getting all your maths vitamins from here. His most recent book is Maths on the back of an Envelope and it’s about the surprising power of mental arithmetic. Along the way, finding out,how to tell the height of a tree using the remains of a savoury snack, estimating crowds, dividing restaurant bills, counting weddings, getting a rough idea of what...

This week on the function room, my guest is Professor Jocelyn Bell Burnell, astrophysicist from Northern Ireland who, as a postgraduate student, discovered a NEW TYPE OF STAR. That’s like discovering A NEW TYPE OF STAR Jocelyn was a postgraduate student at the time and famously her supervisor was awarded the Nobel Prize for radio pulsars, and there was no mention of Jocelyn. Even though she helped build the Interplanetary Scintillation Array – the thing that found it- over two years and she was the one who first noticed the weird data the was the radio pulsar, sometimes reviewing nearly 100ft o...

After a long hiatus, the function room is back and for the first episode, comedian and erstwhile mathsy type Dara O'Briain is the guest. We chat about all sorts, hard sums, looking at the stars, the fantasy of one day going back to learn 'just for the sake of it' and then agreeing that idea might need a bit more thought. And no he didn't do a masters but I make no apologies for embellishments for the sake of a pun.

In this episode after Ruby makes up her mind, we’re talking about the mathematics of free will. It's recorded at the Cat Laughs Comedy Summer Series in Kilkenny, Ireland. A special series of shows to reintroduce everyone to the vague concept of Going To Stuff Again.My guest is Dr Kevin Mitchell. He’s a neuroscientist a professor at Trinity College Dublin and author of a book called Innate which goes right into the heart of the brain…well not the heart, confusing terminology, but right into the cells. And as he got to the smallest bits of the brain...

This time, it's about Growth and De-Growth. De-What? What-Growth? A term that's been around for a while but it's obviously being talked about more if an eejit like me is throwing it around at dinner-parties. (or I will when they come back)My guest is Dr Jason Hickel who has written about Degrowth in his book Less is More. We talk about what is degrowth what it isn't, the sneaky power of exponential growth, why imperialism is alive and (making people un)well, the curious history of GDP, a brief tangent on the history of the board game monopoly, social m...

Welcome back to the Function Room, And this time, it’s about QUEUES. This has been a summer of queues. A flurry of covid tests and two vaccinations have meant a brush with Big Queue. Which got me thinking  - What makes a good queue or a bad one? And is there any maths behind it. There’s a hatch free so step forward, Professor Ken Duffy, director of the Hamilton Institute in Maynooth University to tell me about Queuing Theory.As usual on the Function room, the topic goes off in all sorts of directions. Along the way we find o...