O'Really?

June 12, 2014

A passion for England: Suffering at the Brazil WorldCup in 2014

Filed under: football,mathematics — Duncan Hull @ 11:10 am
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How to Win the World Cup: Step One: Dream on, Dreamer

Are you passionate about your football team? When I say passion I mean passion as in suffering, from the Latin verb patī meaning to suffer. World cups are passionate milestones for many people, they leave indelible marks on the psyche, you remember who you were with, where you were and how your team suffered.

Like many England supporters I’ve suffered as the english media whips up false hope about the prospects of the squad every four years. “This year could be our chance”, and “we’ve got some really good players”, “remember 1966?”, “thirty years of hurt never stopped me dreaming” bla bla bla….

Passionate English suffering at the World Cup (1982-2014)

All this hope, passionately flies in the face of reason, cold facts and history:

So if history [2,3] and mathematics (via predictwise) are anything to go by, there is (at the time of writing) a 96.5% chance that English suffering will continue and a 60% chance that the suffering will occur in the latter stages of the competition…

Wherever you are, whoever you support and whatever their chances, enjoy the inevitable suffering that comes with being passionate about zero-sum games like football. Life would be very boring without passion and suffering…

References

  1. Clemente FM, Couceiro MS, Martins FM, Ivanova MO, & Mendes R (2013). Activity profiles of soccer players during the 2010 World Cup. Journal of Human Kinetics, 38, 201-11 PMID: 24235995
  2. Graham McColl (2010) How to win the World Cup Bantam Press, ISBN: 0593066227
  3. Alex Bellos (2014) Futebol: The Brazilian Way of Life Bloomsbury Paperback ISBN: 0747561796

May 16, 2012

Blue Moon hypothesis tested in Large Football Collider (LFC)

Filed under: football,funding,funny,Science — Duncan Hull @ 7:36 am
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The Manchester Derby 2007. What a difference five years makes

“This is how it feels to be City, this is how it feels to be small, this is how it feels when your team wins nothing at all.”  [1,3]

If you are not interested in Football Science, look away now. Normal service will be resumed shortly.

There is a controversial idea in football that money buys trophies, also known as Mancini’s Blue Moon hypothesis.

Two rival Universities have led the way in testing this idea, The University of Old Trafford and the The University of Eastlands, both in Manchester. One institute is led by a Scot, Professor Ferguson the other by an Italian, Professor Mancini. Both Universities have assembled teams of elite researchers including Doctor Vidic (PhD, University of Spartak Moscow) and Doctor Kompany (PhD, University of Hamburger) in their respective labs to carry out the necessary experiments.

Professor Mancini’s research laboratory have recently produced some intriguing experimental results by winning the 2012 Premier League title with generous funding from the Mansour Research Council (MRC) [2] (not to be confused with the Medical Research Council). The MRC has invested significantly more funding than rival bodies like the Glazer Research Council (GRC) not be be confused with the Global Research Council, which has opened up exciting new research opportunities in applied football science.

Some leading football scientists say Mancini’s Blue Moon hypothesis has been proven beyond all doubt; money does buy you trophies. Other scientists say that is it too early to tell, these results are inconclusive and more research is needed. Professor Ferguson insists that other factors besides money are significant in winning trophies.

Experimentalists will resume their research when the Large Football Collider (LFC) is switched back on in August 2012 after its annual summer shutdown. Is Mancini’s hypothesis proven or not? Tune in next season …

References

  1. Inspiral Carpets (1990) This Is How It Feels to be Lonely, This Is How It Feels to be Small Mute records
  2. The Premier League Research Council (PLRC) funds research into basic and applied football science in collaboration with the Mansour Research Council and many others. These football science councils have a larger fund than all the other traditional scientific research councils combined (EPSRC, BBSRC, NERC, MRC, STFC and PPARC etc).

July 7, 2010

Top ten excuses for World Cup football failures (with citations)

Filed under: football — Duncan Hull @ 8:30 am
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NASA Blue Marble 2007 West by NASA Goddard Photo and Video, on FlickrFootball fever grips the globe as we reach the final stages of the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa. Alongside the traditional game where one winning team takes all, leaving 31 losing teams to go home earlier than expected, there is another competition running in parallel. Which losing team can come up with the best excuses for formidable football failure? All manner of feeble and pathetic excuses are offered, but many aren’t backed up with proper citations of peer-reviewed research published in scientific journals. So let’s set the balance straight. Here are the top ten excuses for world cup losers (with citations), using some help from sports scientists [1] and the wikipedian protester demanding that a citation is needed: (more…)

May 21, 2009

Upcoming Gig: The Italian Job at NETTAB

Filed under: conferences,semweb — Duncan Hull @ 11:06 am
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NETTAB: Network Tools and Applications in BiologyNetwork Tools and Applications in Biology (NETTAB) is a series of workshops in Bioinformatics. It focuses on the most promising and innovative ICT tools and their utility in Bioinformatics. These workshops aim to introduce participants to the evolving network standards and technologies that are being applied to the field of biology.

Since 2001, the NETTAB workshops have being doing a Giro d’Italia or  Grand Tour of Italy; Genova, Bologna, Naples, Sardinia, Lake Como and Pisa have all played host to the workshop. This year, NETTAB 2009 is in Catania at the Università degli Studi di Catania in Sicily close to Mount Etna.

There is special theme for this years workshop, held on June 10-13, on Technologies, Tools and Applications for Collaborative and Social Bioinformatics Research and Development. So I’m very pleased that Paolo Romano asked me to do a keynote presentation (w00t!) on the work we have been doing in the REFINE project and myExperiment. Grazie Paolo, grazie. And thanks Carole Goble too for the recommendation.

If you’re going to NETTAB this year, see you there. If you’d like to come, today is the last day for the early bird discount, sign up at the registration page. The scientific programme looks interesting, it will be good to meet Alex Bateman and Tim Clark and the rest of this years speakers.

Now, if my keynote presentation is going to (as Michael Caine once famously said [1]) “blow the bl**dy doors off” [2], it needs loads more work. So I’d better get back to it. Ciao!

[Update: See reports from day one, day two and day three of NETTAB 2009.]

References

  1. Peter Collinson and Troy Kennedy-Martin (1969) The Italian Job
  2. Michael Caine (1969) “You’re only supposed to blow the bl**dy doors off!”
  3. Cannata, N., Schröder, M., Marangoni, R., & Romano, P. (2008). A Semantic Web for bioinformatics: goals, tools, systems, applications BMC Bioinformatics, 9 (Suppl 4) DOI: 10.1186/1471-2105-9-S4-S1

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