Irrationals Blog

This article from Tom Fordyce on the BBC website reminded us of our problem from last June's sport site, Who's the Best?
The article is all about the Six Nations Rugby tournament, and who would win if factors such as financial status of the different nations were taken into account.
Do you agree with Tom's analysis? Are there other factors you think he should have taken into account?

In the problem there are a series of diagrams.
What stories could you tell about the sporting events represented in the diagrams?
Was there more information you wanted to know?
 
If you haven't seen them, you may also be interested in looking at the diagrams in Charting Success.

The triathlon is a sport which consists of three consecutive races, a swim, a bike race and finally a long run.
In the problem, you were invited to work out how many calories each triathlete burned during an entire race.
Were you surprised by your results?
Do you think the modelling assumptions made in the problem were valid?
Can you suggest other models that may be more appropriate?

Thirteen nations competed in a sports tournament. Unfortunately, we do not have the final medal table, but we have the following pieces of information:
 

Did you manage to solve the LCM Sudoku?
Do you have any hints and tips to help others?
Did you solve it in the same order that Alison, Charlie or Steve did?
Discuss this and any other thoughts you have about the problem here.
 

Each symbol has a numerical value. The total for the symbols is written at the end of each row and column.
 

 

This is a size 5 cable:
 

In the problem, there are four approaches shown for working out how many strands there would be in a size $n$ cable.
Can you make sense of the methods shown in the problem?
Can you describe any other methods?