Author Archives: blueocean

Pythagoras would have liked TV shopping

Pythagoras’ theorem is one of the beauties of mathematics. Something so simple as being able to work out sides of a right angled triangle has had pretty much unlimited use in practical engineering as well as very theoretical linear algebra and calculus. For those of you less mathematically inclined, I’ll explain briefly what the theorem says and then show you a nice real-world application of it. The Theorem If your years of mathematics are long gone and forgotten, then Pythagoras’ […]

Pupillary Protest

‘Pupillary Distance’ is an ophthalmic term. It means, quite simply, the distance between your pupils. If you wear glasses, then you may remember the optician putting a strange metal frame on you and rotating some markers on the top of it before you have a pair made. This is how they measure your pupillary distance (hereafter, ‘PD’). The PD is an important measurement, because the curvature of the lens must be centred around your pupil in order for you to […]

The Groin Strike Dilemma

Back when the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) was in its infancy, there were very few rules. Ex-presidential candidate John McCain actually described it as the human equivalent of a cock fight, and to be fair to him, the lack of rules made for a rather unsavoury spectacle in some cases. One of the most notable cases in question happened in UFC 4, when strikes to the groin were completely legal. It saw Keith Hackney punch Joe Son (in the photo) […]

World Cup prediction results (and some statistics)

Well, the World Cup has been and gone. Enthralling as always, this time the tournament proved to be more of a tactical battle. Although I felt Germany deserved to win, Spain did manage to stamp their authority and lose their ‘perennial underachiever’ status. Let’s look back at my prior predictions to compare them to what really happened…     1. Team that completely meets expectations Prediction: Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) No surprise that I was spot-on here. […]

How many games are there in a tournament?

In keeping with the football spirit, I’m going to use the format of the FIFA World Cup as an example to show you how to calculate the total number of matches/games played in a tournament. There are two cases that we need to consider: 1. The league stage – where every team plays every other team in a group 2. The knockout stage, which follows a structure like that shown in the picture above, until one team is declared the […]

5 alternative World Cup predictions

It’s less than a week to go until the start of the 2010 FIFA Football World Cup – the second biggest sporting event in the world, after the Olympics. As always, before any sort of tournament, there will be predictions, wagers, speculation etc. on matters such as who will win, who will score the most goals, and so on. Whilst all that is very entertaining, it gets a little boring after the same things are said by 100 different sports […]

Mouse activity

I discovered a neat bit of software last week. It’s called IOGraph and you can download it here for Windows, OSX or Linux. If you leave it running in the background, it will trace your mouse movements. It will also put a ‘blob’ where your mouse movement comes to a stop. The bigger the dot, the more time the mouse has been left in that position. Although the intention for it was to be an artistic application, I had a […]

Who should you vote for? Download my Election Model!

I’m sure you know that next Thursday, the UK is going to have a general election. And I’m also pretty sure that you’re sick of hearing about it all over the media. Random interviews with MPs spewing out generic garbage litter the news channels. It’s worse than a playground squabble. Something that is as important as you helping to decide the future of the UK has, as usual, been trivialised into some X Factor-esque popularity contest. I know what my […]

Daniel Kahneman, Loss Aversion and a video

Out of all of the various areas and branches of economics, none has captured my interest more than ‘behavioural economics’. This studies the links between psychology and economics to try to discover more about how the individual thinks when faced with decisions. It brings to light the irrationality of the human being, and the flaws of many classical economic models, which assume rational behaviour at all times. Israeli psychologist Daniel Kahneman was one of the pioneers of this field of […]

Top 20 Favourite Games of All Time

In the world of digital entertainment, some games have transcended the boundaries and managed to create artistic, intelligent and immersive experiences that cannot be matched. I thought I’d sit down and think about the computer games that have had the biggest impact – on me and the gaming world. Here are my top 20 games of all time. 20. Worms: Armageddon (PC – 1999) Probably the most innovative multiplayer strategy game ever made. The Worms series throws teams of up […]

Present Discounted Value

Before we get down to the maths, let me digress to explain why there is a still from BBC’s motoring magazine Top Gear at the top of this page. In the last few series of the show, I have noticed an interesting tendency for BBC to include attractive women in the camera shot whilst the presenters are sitting in the foreground. The image above shows a prime example of this. Whether this is a conscious attempt at subliminal messaging targeted […]

Cycle your way to musical theory

Modes. They seem to be difficult for many musicians to get the hang of. Fortunately, I’ve found that the easiest way to understand them and to explain them lies in a nice bit of maths. A quick note on Cycles Cycles are a neat piece of mathematics, lying as a part of permutations within the realms of combinatorics and algebra. Despite its simple nature, it has very powerful applications. Let me give you a short introduction. A permutation of a […]