Charles Bannerman

I heard they once lost 5-0 to a Patients' XI and all five goals were scored by headers.

We've had that one already haven't we?

By any chance is the white building on the left the former laundry which, briefly in 1968, became The Scene disco which used to run after school discos for under 18s?

I have only ever seen one ice hockey match and don't intend returning. It was Aviemore Blackhawks versus (predictably) some other team whose name was a town coupled with some kind of aggressive animal at Aviemore ice Rink. It was absolutely freezine in there and I thought the game would never end because they kept having these "time outs" like American Football which I find equally tedious for the same reason.

Absolutely!!! Is there any connection between the fact that there is a full moon and that the Craig seems to be on fire?!

As Captain Mainwaring would say "I was waiting for someone to notice that" but I decided to go for a bit of artistic licence since the statue depicts what poor Flora started doing in 1746. I didn't actually know the precise date of the statue but assumed that it originates from some time after the late 1830s which is when the castle was built. It's predecessor was blown up by the Jacobites in 1746.

As long as that's not the wife you're talking about!!

That is Tomnahurich but it's not mini golf because there is now an 18 hole golf course at Torvean. There were 9 holes even when I was a kid and it was extended to 18 by developing the opposite side of the road with 9 more holes in the late 70s. There is now talk of shifting the golf course if they ever get as far as starting the West Link road.

Legendary stuff! That's the first time I've actually seen that famous altercation between Murd and McGrain - who should have had a straight red in my view. But at Celtic Park? Not a chance! By pure coincidence, in this week's Highland News I will be remembering with affection the great Scottish Cup campaigns of that decade before ICT came into being. Apart from Jags beating Kilmarnock and playing at Celtic Park we had Caley beating Airdrie, Clyde, Stenhousemuir, Stirling Albion, Berwick and playing Rangers, Hearts, St Johnstone and St Mirren. Correct me if I am wrong, but did all that lot not take place between 1984 and 1992? These were great days for Inverness football at a time when Bobby Wilson's Ross County also had some great results.

Scoring four against Liverpool is quite an achievement for a team from a Morayshire village stuck there between Elgin and Forres.

I'm not much into the various "zillions" but we do have the same answer because I get (to five significant figures) 1.2576 x (10 to the 22) or 12576000000000000000000 different permutations. Put in different terms, that's about 1800000000000 times the population of the earth, or alternatively, roughly the number of "air" molecules in an "empty" beer can. But that's only the odds against that particular set of matches. If you want them to come out in a particular order, you have to multiply by a further 16! (factorial 16) which is 2.09 x (10 to the 13) or 20900000000000. That gives 2.63 x (10 to the 35) or 38 million million millon millon times the population of the earth, or quarter of a million times as many molecules as are contained in the earth's entire stock of sea water! Did I ever teach you? And have we gone off topic?

All these Highland League clubs getting in without having to go through the Qualifying Cup is confusing me! In old money the round of 32 (to me the best day in Scottish football) was the third round where the top teams came in for the first time. I don't know what the hell round is what these days but will try to work out something for 32 just for the hell of it when I get home later tonight. The number will be massive!

A really bad shout on my part that day! I decided that Thistle didn't have a snowball's so went to watch a cross country race in Forres instead. I was coming back up Kingsmills road just as the crowd were coming out of the game. I would my window down and asked a Jaggie the score. "3-0" "Oh well, never mind lads. There's always next yea!" "3-0 FOR THISTLE!!"

Round 4? The last 16? The numbers are enormous! I make the probability of any particular eight game draw coming out in any order to be 1 in 43,243,200 - in other words more than three times less likely even than winning the 6 number Lotto. And the chances of that draw coming out in a particular order are 108,864 times less even than that - roughly 40 billion to one! Round of 32 anyone?

I agree. One way of looking at this is if you take the 1/1680 for these four pairings to emerge in any order and then allow for the probability of the order which is 1/4 for the 1st one being 1st, 1/3 for the second coming next of the 3 that are left, then 1/2 for the third one and of course 1 for the last one, that gives a further 1/(2 x 3 x 4) = 1/24. 1/24 x 1/1680 = 1/43320 = 1/8! (factorial 8 which is 8 x 7 x 6...x1) So Rasczak on the one hand and PerfICT and myself on the other have been stating probabilities of two different outcomes - the relevant pairings happening in any order and these pairings coming out in a specific order. The former is 24 (or 4!) times as likely as the latter. It's also interesting to note that 1680 = 8!/4! and also = 14 x 10 x 6 x 2 as stated in my earlier post. In response to CMIB's query about what I used to teach... it was Chemistry but relatively few people seem to know this! I have been taken as a teacher of Maths, History, PE and on one occasion David Currie even introduced me on Saturday Sportscene as an English teacher!

Blimey, what were the chances of that? 1/1680 - the same as any other draw!

Aye.. the deid dugs beside the duckpond!

I'm glad the poor wumman has at least received some joy in her life. How would you all fancy standing there since 1746 getting your head shat on by seagulls?

The Royal We? Is that something the Queen pays for with funds from the Privy Purse?

Aerosol Day Johndo, Johnboy, Scarlet Pimple and Mantis I just thought that "Aerosol" was a slight mis-spelling

I'm with PerfICT on this one. The probability of ICT drawing Spartans/Berwick is 1/7 so at home that halves to 1/14. If that happens then, with six teams left the probability of DU drawing Celtic is 1/5 which becomes 1/10 at Tannadice. If that also happens then, with four teams left the chances of Falkirk and Hibs are 1/3 which becomes 1/6. Now only with Raith and QoS left they are bound to draw each other - probability = 1 - but that becomes 1/2 for Starks Park. To find the probability of several events you have to multiply the individual probabilities together. 1/14 x 1/10 x 1/6 x 1/2 = 1/1680. The overall general expression for the probability for a draw involving an even number of "n" teams coming out in a particular way will involve something called a product operator which will give you a sequence of terms to be multiplied together. That sequence is (2n-2)(2n-6)(2n-10)...... and so on for n/2 terms. So when n = 8 as here we have (16-2)(16-6)(16-10)(16-14) Which gives us (as above) - 14 x 10 x 6 x 2 = 1680.... or actually 1 over 1680.

Certainly both have been red and green for as long as I can remember.... which is longer than I care to admit!

You'd better watch. He'll set his QC on you

IBM, the building on the right is the old station facade which was replaced, I think in the 60s, by what we have now.

There have been various taxi ranks in Inverness over the years. The back of the Caley Hotel was one, and I have seen photos of that as late as the 1950s. There were also horse drawn taxis at the Town House and the Station is another place where they would inevitably have been. I'm not sure about any more.