The Function Room – Details, episodes & analysis

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 whether stats will kill football.

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.

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 energy that the planet uses every year: how to make it from electrons moving around instead of just burning stuff in the ground.

we talk about carbon fibre electric wires, magic cement, stone batteries, black mass and why changing the energy system of an entire planet sounds like a crazy idea but it just might work

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.

You can find her on all the socials and catherinesheridan.ie. If H2 is your thing and let's face it, it is whether you like it or not, she's the woman to go to. She mentions one book I'm definitely going to read: How the world really works by Vaclav Smil.

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, He takes me on a tour of 18th and 19th century geniuses who couldn't stop thinking about prime numbers.

There will be bits where you'd really want to visualise what's going on. For that, check out the link below

You'll hear me butt in -in the edit- with some simple explanations of things I didn't understand at the time. I didn't interrupt at the time because I didn't know what queesiotn to ask and wanted to appear smarter than i was. You know, a tale as old as time.

How I Learned to Love and Fear the Riemann Hypothesis | Quanta Magazine

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.