What chance Brexit? | A Maths Teacher

 

What chance Brexit?

As the deadline date of March 29th looms ever closer, are we any closer to finding out what will happen?

On his blog Jon Worth has produced an excellent flow chart where can follow all the possible twists and turns before ending at one of five possible outcomes. In addition to suggesting possible outcomes, he has added probabilities at each decision point.

Using nothing more than GCSE Maths*, it is then possible to calculate the probabilities of the various outcomes.

I’ve done the maths for you, the results are below (rounded to 2 decimal places)
No Deal…

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An ‘L’ of a chance | A Maths Teacher

If you look at the Premier League table this evening you will see that Liverpool sit proudly atop the football pyramid.

No great surprise there, you may think.

But then see who tops the Championship tonight: Leeds United.

League One? Luton Town, and League Two? Yes, you’ve guessed it, Lincoln City.

So all four of the top leagues are crowned by a team beginning with the letter L. All the more surprising as the only other team in the 92 that begin with L are Leicester City (who, coincidentally, play Liverpool this evening.)

But gets even better – if we go down to the next tier, The…

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Six Nations Stats | A Maths Teacher

Back in the summer, we were all struck with World Cup fever and, in this post, I shared some stats and charts looking at the heights of players in the tournament.

In a few days time the Six Nations rugby tournament kicks off for another year, so I thought it appropriate to have a look at the stats of those involved.

Above you can see a box plot illustrating the weights of the six squads.

[In a box plot, the line through the box is the median – or middle – value: half the players are heavier than this value, half lighter; the top of the box the upper quartile – 75% of data values (in…

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The Ten Year Challenge | A Maths Teacher

The “10 Year Challenge” is the current rage on social media, whereby you are encouraged to post a picture of yourself from 10 years ago, alongside one from now, to see how you’ve aged.

I thought it would be interesting to see how the last ten years have been for the nation’s football teams.

I found their league position at the end of the 2008/09 season and compared it to their current* league position.

*before kick off, Saturday 19th January 2019.

I’ve plotted the results above – those above the blue diagonal line are in a better place now than ten years ago, those below are now lower…

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GDP ranking by country | A Maths Teacher

I recently discovered the video above that ranks the top ten countries by GDP from 1960 to 2017.

It is quite mesmeric watching it (I am reminded of the great Hans Rosling and how he presented data) and got me wondering: is it Economics, History or Statistics?  (It is, of course, all three)

And, as I’ve said before, good statistics always prompt more questions than they answer. The first of which may be:

What about GDP per capita?

Well here’s a video that answers that question:

… which prompts the question:

so what happened to Monaco in 2012 and Lichtenstein in 2016?

… for which…

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A tough question | A Maths Teacher

A student asked me a difficult question the other day.

I’m normally pretty confident with my subject knowledge, and am rarely stumped when quizzed out of the blue. Sometimes a tricky question from Further Maths, or a more esoteric A level problem may leave me scratching my head for a minute or two. Worst case scenario, I may need to ponder the problem for ten minutes in the calm, peace and quite of break time or lunch time, when I can focus on it without distraction, but, typically, I’ll get there in the end and give the pupil the answer they were seeking.

But not this time. As soon as…

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Deaths due to terrorism in the UK | A Maths Teacher

I came across the graph above and I was immediately struck by the stories it tells by forcing you, the reader, to ask the obvious questions.

Clearly something happened in the 1990’s.

The peace process was begun in Northern Ireland, culminating in the Good Friday Agreement of 1998. Surely this graph alone is enough to convince anyone of the importance and historical significance of the Good Friday Agreement? Why would anyone do anything, anything, to jeopardise its continued success? If anyone should need any convincing that we shouldn’t, we mustn’t, return to a hard border on the island…

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Saints or Sinners? | A Maths Teacher

The football may be over, but the fun never stops!

There is plenty of data on the recent Russia 2018 World Cup to be found on the Official Fifa site

Using their statistics, I have compared the number of fouls committed versus the number of fouls suffered and plotted the scatter graph above.  Fouls committed are on the x axis, fouls suffered on the y. The line is a (computer generated) line of best fit using linear regression.

The greater the distance above the line, the more “saintly” we can say a team was – more fouled against than fouling; those below the line were the “sinners” of…

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Anyone for tennis? | A Maths Teacher

And so the sun sets on another Wimbledon tournament, one that will be remembered in part for the two losing singles finalists.

Serena Williams was the runner up in the ladies final, ten months after giving birth, and Kevin Anderson lost in the men’s final to Novak Djokovic, two days after playing the second-longest match in Wimbledon history, taking six hours, thirty six minutes to overcome John Isner in the semi-final.

Understandably, Anderson has called for a change in how close games are decided.

To win a tennis set, a player must win 6 games, and be two clear games ahead of their…

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Oh, what a night | A Maths Teacher

A Maths Teacher Celebrates

or why football remains the most popular and exciting sport

Oh, what a night. It had drama, heroes and villains, and, for once, the tears shed at the end of game were tears of joy. On a night of pure theatre, England beat Colombia in a penalty shoot out to proceed to the quarter finals of the World Cup.

A nation rejoiced and when, perhaps still a little bleary eyed, it woke realising it wasn’t just a dream, the feel good factor across the land was palpable. Workmates chatted amiably, neighbors conversed happily, strangers smiled as they past each other;…

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