Very well, then, here's my summary of where it ranks in that respect. If I had to give Timothy Gowers' "Very Short Introduction to Mathematics" or Conway's "Book of Numbers" a 5/5, then "Why do Buses come in Threes" deserves a 3/5. It explains and inspires far less than either, but it's not too bad. The main part of the simulation was a simple loop that kept going until the first bus reached the end of the route. The intriguing answers to these and other questions about the curiosities of everyday life can be found in this delightfully irreverent and highly informative book. Why Do Buses Come in Threes? explains how math and the laws of probability are constantly at work in our lives, affecting everything we do, from getting a date to catching a bus to cooking dinner. With great humor and a genuine love for the subject, Rob Eastaway and Jeremy Wyndham present solutions to such conundrums as how fast one should run in the rain to stay dry and who was the greatest sportsman of all time.Discover the mathematical explanations for the strange coincidence of two. An effective Continuing Professional Development (CPD) program which provides guidance to support you in developing skills that help you along your career ‘bus journey’ can support you to take advantage of unexpected or unplanned opportunities. A CPD process that is flexible and driven by you provides a great way to pursue your intellectual curiosity and expose yourself to new ideas and new pathways that you may only recognise in hindsight.

I wondered how hard it would be to write a simulation to test this out. The simulation I describe here isn’t bad, but has (at least) three obvious shortcomings, which I didn’t really spot until the end. Although I’ve thought these through, I haven’t had time to try them yet, so this blog post will describe the first pass at the simulation (which is still quite interesting to watch). I had to be honest: "No idea why they're assigning books for dumb adults to smart kids" was my first reaction, and I told her as much, but I had not read the book yet and I promised to revert once I had. First published in 1998 in the UK and USA, the most recent UK edition published by Portico Books in 2020 Rob Eastway has a book titled “Why do buses come in threes?” which is a collection of musings on the some of the mathematics behind some simple, and often common questions. The question that he used for the title of the book intrigued me, as his answer was (basically) that they don’t. They do come in twos (which he explained), but would probably not come in threes. There are some fun geometry problems, but I wish he would proved proofs rather than simply reveal the answer. I liked the question about where is the best place to view a statue on a high pedestal, which by coincidence I had come across a few days before. I tried to derive his result (based on the tangent-secant theorem) and found that his formula was wrong, although the way the question was posed it made little difference to the result. Maybe that is why providing the proof is a good idea.Jules Gribble, Lesley Traverso and Caroline Stevenson offer an insight into their concurrent session at the 20/20 All-Actuaries Virtual Summit, ‘Are Actuaries Still Relevant?’ Not bad for about 90 minutes fun. However, watching the simulation made me realise that I had made some basic mistakes. Room for improvement

Passengers arrive at all stops right from the start, meaning that by the time the first bus gets to a later stop, there is a huge queue. You can see this in the simulation, which causes bus #1 to keep stopping, resulting in subsequent buses catching it up. You end up with a big cluster of buses at the end.

Clearly, the two basic models we need for this are a bus and a bus stop. I spent a while wondering how best to connect the two together, and after coming up with some complex object graphs, decided that it would just be easier to keep a collection of each, and have each bus know how far it had gone along the route. These things can help – but the ubiquity of bus bunching suggests that they can’t eliminate the problem altogether.

The CPD committee is developing a vision for CPD in the future for the Institute. We are building on learnings from other actuarial and professional bodies in Australia and overseas. We are following established trails and seeking to take the best, for our profession, from their experiences. This is leading toward some changes, but the world is changing around us and we need to capitalise on that or be left behind.In real life, of course, there would be an intervention (Bus Two would almost certainly overtake, as soon as there’s room). And real life is messier than this model in other ways, too. Bus routes are served by more than two buses; passenger flows aren’t so evenly spread. Bus 1 leaves the bus depot to set off on its route. The driver has been held up and the bus is already a few minutes late leaving the depot. It then hits some unexpected traffic and by the time the bus reaches the first stop, it is several minutes late.

As the bus is late, there are now more people at the stop than would be expected because several people have turned up after the bus' expected arrival time. Usually they would have missed this bus and caught the next one, but because of bus 1's lateness, they manage to get onto bus 1. This is a splendid little book. Frankly, I recommend it to everyone, but it would probably only really be appropriate for those who are math-curious. In my ideal world, that actually would include everyone, since there’s a huge difference between math-as-it-is-taught and all of the fantastic stuff that often makes math cool. We encourage you to attend the session ‘Are actuaries still relevant?’ on Thursday 27 August at 11:45 AEST as part of the 20/20 All-Actuaries Virtual Summit to find out more about the CPD Review, ask questions, and participate in the discussion. I’m deliberately ignoring actual units here, so you’ll have to think in terms of units of distance along the route and units of time for the simulation. Displaying the simulation Effectively managing your CPD enables you to catch the more effective ‘second bus’. Historically, CPD has been a compliance exercise that is something that is done as an ‘extra’, and may not have been entirely relevant for you, and not really get you where you want to go. But if you determine what learnings are important and of interest to you, what you need to do to be more effective in your job, and/or what new skills you need to move to a new area or discipline, then you are in control and improve your chances of reaching your objectives. Additionally, a constructive working environment integrated with an effective CPD program can maximise the value of your learning and personal development opportunities.

Displaying the simulation

PDF / EPUB File Name: Why_Do_Buses_Come_in_Threes_-_Robert_Eastaway.pdf, Why_Do_Buses_Come_in_Threes_-_Robert_Eastaway.epub Why Do Buses Come In Threes?” delves into the hidden mathematics of everyday life. Those who find themselves fascinated by numbers and solve numerical puzzles as a hobby, will obviously love this book which sheds light of how maths is present anywhere and everywhere. And then there are people like me, who place mathematics on the same pedestal as foreign languages, because that’s how numbers float in front of us – no different from alphabets of a foreign script. The book serves to remind and help us discover how maths is relevant to everything we do, not just numerically. The author duo aims to provide new insights and stimulate curiosity. He is the director of Maths Inspiration, a national programme of maths lectures for teenagers which involves some of the UK’s leading maths speakers. He was president of the UK Mathematical Association for 2007/2008. [3] He is a former pupil of The King's School, Chester, and has a degree in engineering and management science from the University of Cambridge. [2] Books [ edit ] Our vision, our measure of success is when members say ‘I now see CPD as an integral part of my life, rather than a chore’.