Meet The Scientist Series: What is data? Can maths tell us the story of a sports game?

Meet the Scientist
Welcome to the 2025–2026 Meet the Scientist series!
This year we have another exciting line-up of free online webinars designed for 4th to 6th class children in Ireland.

Can’t join live? Register anyway and you’ll get the replay link by email, available for 7 days.

Teachers, please note: the register button for each webinar will take you to a Zoom registration page with an overview of the content.

You will need to register separately for every webinar you would like your class to attend.

Antibiotics vs. bacteria: who wins the battle?
Meet Parastoo Niloofar, PhD Student in Statistics at the University of Galway, as she uses hurling to show what data is and how numbers can tell the story of a game.

Overview

• Introduce what “data” means in simple terms (information we collect, count, and compare).
• Use hurling as the main example to show how data is collected during a match (scores, player stats, possession, speed).
• Explore what data tells us: spotting patterns, making comparisons, and answering questions (e.g. who played better, what influenced the outcome).