The Function Room

The last episode - and a great way to go out. By taking the ultimate trip on the Z-axis and exploring the sea. We fuss so much about exploring outer space and going to Mars when a whole other planet exists just beyond the beach. Olive Heffernan has been researching the ocean for most of her life. She has written a brilliant book - the high seas about the wonder of life there, and what threatens it...

The penultimate episode before an offical hiatus. (the last year was just me hiding and ghosting) .This is a cracker though. Lewis Dartnell author of The Knowledge - which tells how you rebuild a civilisation from scratch, talks about the key numbers that keep us alive.

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 phenomeno...

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...

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 Einst...

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 c...

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 bod...

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...

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 ho...

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 shou...

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...

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....

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...

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 s...

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...

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...

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 unsolv...

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 it...

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 wha...

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...

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...

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.