The Function Room

GoLoud

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.

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53 episodes
Updated Jul 15, 2025

Episodes53

Newest first

Sep 8, 2021 · 1 hr 19 min
Miracle Grow
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 media fights, Ruby gets to the nub of global inequality when talking about dolls and why despite all of the depressing stuff he has to read, Jason is still optimistic.
Aug 23, 2021 · 56 min
The Ps of Queues
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 out about old telephone exchanges, how Victorian Britain’s worries about their Lordships going extinct led them to develop theory that was used a century later to look at viruses and what it takes to get your mathematics soldered onto a computer chip.
Jun 28, 2021 · 42 min
A Chip Off The New Block
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 considered polite to say. We are not Tiger parents so far. It's just this TV show. It's funny and fun and like millions around the world our Two are hooked on it.They sing the songs, they get invested in the stories. What is it about it? Well the songs are catchy, the animation is great, the stories work. But the sums add up.I wanted to find out why. So I talked to Debbie is the Primary Director at the National centre for Excellence in Teaching Mathematics in the UK but also she's the maths consultant on Numberblocks!Debbie Morgan on Twitter https://twitter.com/thinkingmaths Numberblocks: https://www.learningblocks.tv/numberblocks/home
May 14, 2021 · 1 hr 7 min
Welcome to the Fold
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 80 universities or Robert Lang who gave up engineering degrees to focus on origami solutions to problems of the small and the big.Or to my guest She’s Dr Rachel Quinlan, Head of the School of Mathematics, Statistics and Applied Mathematics. In her day-job according to the NUIG website, "hercurrent research interests are generally in the area of algebra, especially linear algebra and its interactions with group theory, combinatorics, and field theory" .."group theory, particularly the ordinary and projective representation theory of finite groups." But I know that stuff like the back of my hand. So it’s her beautiful origami tessellations that caught my eye.Along the way you’ll hear about MC Escher, listen to me struggle to describe Euclid, a brief mention of diffraction, topology, stents, airbags and naturally where it always ends: With the structure of the universe.And sorry about the delay. I know it’s a pain when podcasts are irregular. Work came in that pays the bills and I'm still trying to work out a way to fit this job into all the others. LINKSBetween the Folds – Youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFrDN5eYPOQMore about Vanessa Gould https://www.vanessagould.com/More about Paul Jackson http://www.origami-artist.com/More about Robert Lang https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYKcOFQCenoMore about Dr. Rachel Quinlan http://www.maths.nuigalway.ie/~rquinlan/ and see her art here https://twitter.com/rkquinlan
Mar 15, 2021 · 45 min
The Matrix Revised
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 loves modelling the complexity of networks in the real world with some very powerful and sometimes simple tools. Speaking of simple tools, before long, I start throw around lingo like Eigenvalues and Markov Chains like I know what I'm talking about. We find out how Google got so successful, a brief digression into how drugmakers know their drugs will work and before finishing off on how to control the spread of disease. And Ruby and Lily find themselves playing with a real-life application of a Markov Chain, a Game of Snakes and Ladders. Jane Breen https://sites.google.com/view/breenjA really good youtube channel for visualising what's going on in Matrices and All Of That. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZHQObOWTQDPD3MizzM2xVFitgF8hE_ab
Feb 9, 2021 · 45 min
Algorithm and Blues
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.
Jan 18, 2021 · 45 min
The Solace of Quantum
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't as safe as it was online. Listen to me trying to fit enormous concepts inside my tiny brain, find out about Coding Theory and how a man in a Maths and Stats department in Dublin is trying to stay one step ahead of The Quantum Menace (my hyperbole) armed with pens, paper, markers, whiteboard in an office that doesn't have a window. (news clips from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5MBAJJU9Hk )
Dec 29, 2020 · 45 min
A Sum of Funny.
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 - especially the sound and vision people ticking over. We chatted about the usual topics of sizing an incinerator, the physics of an adult's jokes, the maths of a toddler's joke, Newton's Law of cooling (whether it's better to put the milk in the tea early or late) and how we both navigated lockdown using the Dunning Kruger effect.
Nov 21, 2020 · 56 min
The Math(s) Doesn't Care About Your Feelings
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 wall. So that CNN's John King can feel at home when he visits his cousins.)But all of that is mere fluffing before the substantive issue: Why Albania loves the Eurovision. WIth Adrian Kavanagh Lecturer in Geography at National University of Ireland, Maynooth.
Nov 6, 2020 · 41 min
Galaxy Brain
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?Not bad for 40 minutes work.
Oct 23, 2020 · 35 min
Model Behaviour
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 model of how the brain works. And me, hoping to learn from both. Comments, suggestions, criticism -take it handy though- to @colmoregan @functionroompod on twitter.
Oct 9, 2020 · 51 min
Spilling the T.
"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 pure fact but just how certain we are about how doubtful we are. It makes sense. Trust me. I'm right. (Roughly)
Sep 10, 2020 · 33 min
1 They Grow Up So Fast with Kit Yates
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.