The Function Room
A podcast about the big numbers, the hard sums, the mathematics that defines, runs, shapes, changes, begins, ends, every things our lives and the world around us. Hosted by Colm O'Regan. An award-winning radio broadcaster, comedian, novelist and it turns out lapsed engineer who is trying to feel useful again. Each episode sheds light on a tiny corner of a giant subject with entertaining guests and accessible talk.
Episodes
September 10, 2020 • 33 mins
You know that feeling. You look and there are only a few. You turn around and then it's a hundred and then a million. It's growing so fast you can't even count. But it's perfectly natural. It's Exponential Growth. And author of the Maths of Life and Death Kit Yates knows all about its awesome power. We chat about viruses, going viral, pyramids schemes and naturally locusts.
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October 9, 2020 • 51 mins
"Statistics? Really?! Listen Colm I supported you on that first episode because I thought it was a fad and I didn't want to be the one to shut down your dreams but seriously, man... this has gone too far"No hear me out! In this episode I'll be talking about pints of Guinness, medical dilemmas and why we should stop checking worldometer.com/coronavirus every fifteen minutes. It's about why statistics are not always statements of pur...
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October 23, 2020 • 35 mins
You've probably heard it mentioned out of the corner of your ear. Mathematical Modelling. What does it look like, how does it work, where would you even start? And why is a Dublin mathematician modelling the results of electrical currents in human brains? (Donated, don't worry)With Aine Byrne @ainebyrnemaths, Assistant Professor at the Department of Maths and Statistics in UCD and (briefly at the start) 5 year old Ruby with her own...
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November 6, 2020 • 41 mins
My guest is Dr Eloise Stevance an astrophysicist working in Auckland, New Zealand. We’re talking at the same time but on different days of the week. Which is pretty cool.We talk TikTok viral videos, bald headed football linesmen in Scotland being mistaken for a football and how a thing called machine learning is helping people like Eloise find out the answer to life the universe and everything.And bonus info – what gender are stars...
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November 21, 2020 • 56 mins
This week we meet a man who loves maps, elections and naturally Eurovision. We dip our toe in the recent presidential election and find out how you can use maths to see if someone is really trying to steal an election. Not through mysterious bundles of mailed in ballots, but by packing and cracking, drawing funny looking amphibious electoral maps. We hear why we need to Build That Wall in Ireland. (A beautiful colourful electoral w...
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December 29, 2020 • 45 mins
A special Christmas episode recorded in an actual theatre. With actual people. Just sound technicians as events are still banned due to me being TOO FUNNY. This was a fun episode with fellow comedian and fellow former engineer Eleanor Tiernan. It was recorded at the Catcast - a special podcast festival held in the Set Theatre Kilkenny (usually the Comedy Festival home) sponsored by a bit of government money to keep the industry - e...
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January 18, 2021 • 45 mins
This time on the Function Room. It's the little things. The really little things. As Ruby(5) and Lily(3) theorise about the computers a fairy might use, I talk to UCD's John Sheekey about Quantum Computers. I got thinking about it before Christmas when Chinese scientists announced another quantum computing breakthrough.Those brand new heavies that may help humanity heal itself and even the planet but also could mean your money isn'...
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February 9, 2021 • 45 mins
This time on the function room, advertising algorithms start to annoy Ruby so I decided to find out a bit more. And who better to talk to than someone the New York Times described as one of the most valuable observers of Big Data. She is American mathematician, data scientist, and author of Weapons of Math Destruction and budding movie star, Cathy O’Neill.
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March 15, 2021 • 45 mins
Okay enough messing around, this week we get into the Matrix. Okay not that matrix. The mathematical matrix. But this one is way more powerful than a dystopian future in which humanity is unknowingly trapped inside a simulated reality. That’s piddly. Mathematical matrices are used in everywhere, from making computer games to quantum physics.That’s Jane Breen ,Assistant Professor in Applied Maths in Ontario University in Canada. She...
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May 14, 2021 • 67 mins
This time we’re folding. We’re creasing. We’re origami-ing. As Ruby and I make two birds and two planes, I find out a little bit about the world of folding. Even with those small things we made we still got the feeling we were playing with something much bigger. Just by taking a flat sheet of paper and transforming. Folding is seen as a negative word, a defeat. Not to the people like Paul Jackson an artist who teaches folding in 8...
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June 28, 2021 • 42 mins
This time on the function room: My guide to helping people think you’re a great parent. While someone else does the job.The secret? It’s numberblocks. The BAFTA winning animated CBEEBIES TV show for 3 to 6 year old children to get them interested in mathematics in an accessible way. Our children love it. They request it. They watch the same programmes over and over. They are not geniuses – well obvious they are – but it’s not con...
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August 23, 2021 • 56 mins
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 usu...
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September 8, 2021 • 79 mins
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 ...
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September 22, 2021 • 58 mins
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 brai...
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March 23, 2023 • 59 mins
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.
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March 30, 2023 • 36 mins
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 Scintilla...
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April 6, 2023 • 37 mins
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 tre...
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April 14, 2023 • 52 mins
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, C...
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April 22, 2023 • 49 mins
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 mo...
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May 1, 2023 • 38 mins
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 chemi...
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