Figure It Out
The UN recently announced that the world’s population reached the 7 billion mark on 31 October 2011 and confusingly several babies have been symbolically chosen to represent this milestone by different organizations and by individual states. Read more »
There is a famous saying that there are “Lies, damn lies and statistics” and this can frustrate analysts who are already working hard to achieve validation and buy-in against more traditional challenges. Your ability to outright lie with statistics is actually limited when compared to other arenas, as you are bound to the unmovable facts of the raw data, but a clever and numerate individual can be creative and selective with what analysis is shown, and two different stories can emerge. To demonstrate I generated a random time-series for analysis and set about building two interpretations. Read more »
Today is the 11th of November and on this day we observe Remembrance Day and honour members of the armed forces who died in the line of duty. Remembrance Day is observed on this day to recall the official end of World War I on that date in 1918; hostilities formally with the signing of the Armistice.
Wars come at a cost and a burden, which reverberates for many years in the war zones and among the participants. It is not only painful for millions but comes at an economic cost as well.
With yesterday’s Irish presidential election and a general election in Spain due on the 20th November, the Irish-Spanish Figure It Out team this week thought it would be interesting to look at how opinion polls are used to predict voting preferences for the whole electorate.
On the 22 Sept 2011, news hit that a bunch of neutrinos (subatomic particles) were suspected of breaking the speed of light limitation. After four weeks of relentless efforts the media managed to spread the idea that such discovery could challenge Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. But who would guess that the existence of faster than light travel may have a dramatic impact on the fate of the entire human race? This week, Figure it Out, using simple calculations and logic, looks to establish a link between these “superlight neutrinos”, extraterrestrial life and the estimate of the date of the Apocalypse. Read more »
Fed up with being crushed against the window on your way into work? Frustrated by not being able to board the Tube when those minutes wasted could have been spent at home? Annoyed with aggressive attitudes early in the morning?
No-one enjoys the Tube journey, but imagine if there was a strategy to maximise comfort. If you were told there was a method for seeking out those golden little spaces, would you believe it? Read more »
Is following the Rugby World Cup bad for business?
On the first day of the Rugby World Cup (RWC) Figure It Out took a look at the chances of each of the home nations winning this year. As the World Cup is gathering pace it is time to think about the impact this may be having on British enthusiasts who may be showing signs of ‘Rugby fever’. Read more »
Over recent months we’ve been participating in the INFORMS blog challenge. This month the designated topic is ‘Operational Research (OR) and the Environment’ – how can OR and Analytics be used to tackle important environmental issues?
A classic OR problem immediately springs to mind – the Travelling Salesman Problem – where, given a list of cities and the distances between them, the task is to find the shortest possible tour that visits each city exactly once. Translated for the layman, the Travelling Consultant Problem is analogous: say you had to visit 12 different clients in a week and the order did not matter, how can you minimise your travel distance? Here, the solution will also be the most environmentally friendly, as by minimising your travel distance you are likely also to be minimising your carbon footprint. Read more »
The Champions League proper got underway this week and brought with it the usual mouth-watering ties none bigger than the “heavyweights” of European football, Barcelona vs. AC Milan. The match produced the 5th fastest goal in Champions League history when Alexandre Pato score for the visitors after only 24 seconds, and it got me thinking about when teams score the bulk of their goals and in typical OR fashion I’ve penned those thoughts in tables and charts. Read more »
Today kicks off the 7th Rugby World Cup (RWC), and as with many major sporting events, there is much speculation of who will make it to the end to be crowned best in the world. This year 20 teams will battle it out to be the victor of the Webb Ellis Cup, with one team in particular hoping to regain the title that has eluded them since the inaugural tournament in 1987, the host – New Zealand. In this week’s blog, we will explore what it takes to reach the final and speculate if the perceived best teams will win, or, if there is some reality captured in the data which identifies who will really win. Read more »
