Is this Premier League striker a secret maths genius?
Is Chelsea’s Liam Delap a maths genius? Or has he got a trick up his sleeve?
Chelsea striker Liam Delap has recently stunned fans on Instagram by apparently doing incredibly complicated calculations in his head, finding what’s known as the cube root of some very large numbers.
But is he really a human calculator? Or is there something else going on? Tim Harford speaks to Rob Eastaway, mathematician and author of ‘Maths on the Back of an Envelope’ to learn about the trick you can use to pull this off - and while he’s here we also ask him about the trend of more goals being scored in the Premier League.
Presenter: Tim Harford
Producers: Nathan Gower
Series Producer: Tom Colls
Editor: Richard Vadon
Programme Coordinator: Brenda Brown
Sound Engineer: James Beard
Credit: Video of Liam Delap from Chelsea’s Instagram account, chelseafc
Last on
Broadcasts
- Sat 7 Feb 202605:50GMTBBC World Service except Australasia, East and Southern Africa, East Asia & South Asia
- Sun 8 Feb 202605:50GMTBBC World Service East and Southern Africa
- Sun 8 Feb 202609:50GMTBBC World Service Europe and the Middle East & West and Central Africa only
- Sun 8 Feb 202611:50GMTBBC World Service except East and Southern Africa, Europe and the Middle East & West and Central Africa
Unlock the history and truth behind the data with The OU
Explore how numbers shape, and sometimes mislead us, with The Open University.
When can you trust statistics?
BBC Ideas discovers three easy ways to help make sense of statistics.
Podcast
![]()
More or Less
Tim Harford explains the numbers and statistics used in everyday life
