Voting, knights in armour, memory, whales and numbers.
Several academic staff members have made appearances in the media over the past fortnight on some very different subjects.
Dr. Geoffrey Pritchard from the Department of Statistics and Dr. Mark Wilson from the Department of Computer Science appeared on the TV3 news website in the 4 August item Election calculator shows 'extreme results' possible under FPP, concerning the election calculator they have created. This "calculates the composition of Parliament corresponding to a given polling scenario, under each of the five electoral systems considered in the 2011 New Zealand referendum".
The biomechanics of medieval armour is the subject of a new paper in Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, Biological Sciences, co-authored by Dr. Federico Formenti, now at the Department of Sport and Exercise Science. Dr. Formenti was interviewed as part of the Radio New Zealand National's science programme Our Changing World for the 4 August broadcast. The interview can be listened to from their website.
Dr. Donna Rose Addis from the Department of Psychology attended the 5th International Conference on Memory (ICOM) at the University of York in the United Kingdom. While there she was interviewed as part of a 3 August BBC Newsnight programme about memory, part of which has been placed on youtube.
Dr. Rochelle Constantine from the School of Biological Sciences was interviewed for Radio New Zealand National's Sunday morning programme broadcast on 7 August about Bryde's whales in the Hauraki Gulf. The interview is available from the programme website.
New Zealand Herald's sideswipe column on 1 August noted the StatsChat blog site set up by the Department of Statistics. The blog investigates the way figures are used in the media, as well as other ways statistics are employed.