Last night on RTÉ One, Liz Bonnin continued her celebration of science on Future Island, where she was joined by science communicator Phil Smyth and Professor Luke O'Neill who tapped into how Irish innovators are changing the world.
As part of last night's show, comedian, lapsed engineer and self professed math-nerd Colm O'Regan took a trip to Croke Park to sum up the place (pardon the pun).
On #FutureIsland @colmoregan is Up for the Maths in Croke Park 🤓
— RTÉ One (@RTEOne) November 10, 2021
Future Island, 7pm #ScienceWeek2021 pic.twitter.com/AERAGotYAn
Sports has become a numbers game, there's no doubt about it. On Tuesday's Future Island, Donncha O'Callagh spoke about the advancement of science in sport and how technology is being used to measure and improve performance.
Once upon a time, a weighing scales and a stop watch was all that was needed to track a player's training. These days, however, every team worth their salt has a statistician crunching the numbers on each player's performance.
But what about the fans?
According to O'Regan, there's even more mathematics and data to be considered when it comes to the hallowed halls of stadiums like Croke Park.
The iconic sporting venue holds 82,300 people - all of whom need to get in and out in a safe, secure, timely and controlled manner.
A full Croke Park has to be evacuated in just eight minutes, but how is that even possible? According to O'Regan it all comes down to mathematics.
"You need to know things like the safe holding capacity, the entry capacity, the egress capacity, the maximum safe holding, the flow rate," he explains.
When the pitch is turned into a dance floor for concert goers, the math has to be adjusted. Calculating the speed at which an Ed Sheeran fan runs when Galway Girl starts playing is no mean feat, but O'Regan is up for explaining the challenge.
"When designing stadiums like Croke Park, crowd modelling software with sophisticated math algorithms is used to simulate how people will use the building or space in order to predict what might happen and how they behave in all sorts of scenarios."
Next time you visit Croker, be sure to consider the math of it all.
