112 = Staring Safely At The Sun and Celebrations Off By One

Hello, and welcome to A Problem Squared, the problem-solving podcast, which is a lot like batch cooking, in that each portion provides enough tasty solutions to keep you satisfied for the next two weeks.

Your hosts are Matt Parker, a mathematician, YouTuber, and author, who is like curry.

Philly

Yes.

Spicy.

Maybe.

Sometimes.

You like hot stuff anyway.

That is true.

But has the capacity to stink up your kitchen.

Hey.

And myself, Beck Hill, a comedian, writer, and presenter who is a bit like Bolognese.

A crowd favorite, but I will ruin your Tupperware.

Yeah.

Yes.

That's very accurate.

Have you recently been batch cooking back?

Yes, my first time.

Oh, wow.

Anyway, on this episode.

I've got some advice for staring directly at the sun.

I'm looking at an off-by-one error in anniversaries.

Ooh, excellent.

And we have any other batch?

Any other batching?

Matt.

Beck.

How are you?

I'm good.

Excellent.

It's been all go, back from Australia.

Yeah.

I went and did my first...

Real gig

in a very long time.

When was the last time you did a real gig?

That's a great question.

You're not counting an evening of unnecessary detail.

No.

Okay.

Here's my definition of a real gig.

So I went and did a spot at

your favorite comedy club and mine, the Bill Murray.

Yes.

Run by the fantastic angel comedy people.

And I'm classifying it as a real gig because

I was not mentioned in any of the promotional material for this gig.

I did not tell anyone.

I was doing this gig.

No, not even me.

Not even you.

That was by accident.

I live quite close by.

That was collateral collateral damage.

Because I was speaking to the wonderful Barry Fernand.

You were.

Yeah.

Who was on and then.

Who's running the gig, yeah?

He mentioned it, and I was like, oh.

Oh, I haven't seen Matt for over six months.

But that's cool.

That's all right.

I mean, I'm busy anyway.

I wouldn't have had time.

No, I'm very sorry.

I rolled in, did the gig.

hung around to do a podcast afterwards and then boom out of there um but so the reason i'm classifying it as a real gig gig is

it was in a small, perfectly normal comedy club,

and no one had a clue who I was.

Yep.

And the reason I'm doing this is because you and I, both doing the Edinburgh Festival Fringe,

massive comedy festival.

Huge.

Huge amount of fun.

Yep.

And we'll have a lot of fun doing our shows.

Everyone, please come and see them.

Yes.

What's yours called again, Matt?

Mine's called Getting Triggy With It.

Nice.

Matt Parker does the maths.

Mine's called Guess Who's Beck, Beck Again, Beck Hill's Beck, Tell Tell a Friend.

There you go.

You have the longest name.

Yeah.

And I actually do have Beck Hill at the very beginning of it, officially.

Beck Hill Colin.

Beck Hill Colin.

Guess who's Beck.

Yeah.

So that people could find me alphabetically in the

but that does mean that my name does get mentioned five times in the title of my own show.

Classic stand-up comedian.

And I'm very excited about the show, doing previews, patouring it afterwards.

People buy tickets to all these things.

But when you're at the fringe, you get asked to go and do spots on other shows.

Yes.

And I've not done a show

where I roll out in front of an audience of people who have no idea who I am and are just there for comedy.

And I've got to both entertain them and make sure everyone in that audience who would enjoy my actual show comes to see it.

Yep.

So I thought I would book in a real gig.

So I could basically try and knock some edges off my stand up and all that jazz.

Yeah.

Because it is a perishable skill.

Like if you're not doing it.

Gosh, it is like exercising.

Yeah, yeah.

Oh, I felt that.

I felt like I was going for a run for the first time.

Yep.

Having not run for years.

Yeah, I did adequate.

Yeah, I've had a few of those.

Yeah.

I thought, oh, small gig, no one would notice.

But I was on, like, after

Alistair Beckett King and, like, before Sean Walsh.

Yeah.

And I'm like, oh, yeah, real low expectations from the audience.

Just sliding in.

The last time I did a gig at the Bill Murray.

This is a great ad for the Bill Murray party.

Oh, it's a really good place.

The last time I did the gig that you did there, which is, I think the social

club.

Social Club, it's called, I think, Wednesdays.

Yeah.

Because quite often they will keep the headliner a secret.

Correct.

And the last time I think I did a spot there, I was on in the middle section and the headliner was Azizansari.

Yeah, exactly.

That's the risk.

Yeah.

And I was like, oh, it's Tom Haverford.

Yeah, that you do get a quality of act.

Too good a quality.

And it makes you very aware.

So I felt a cute.

I reckon I would have done maybe fine in a different

low expectation audience situation.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So it was fine.

Real.

I

haven't got the machinery to

concisely convey to a brand new cold audience who I am and what I'm doing.

Yep.

I've gotten too used to having a rolling start where a statistically significant amount of the audience knows who I am.

And the thing is, I would say that

as both a punter and a performer,

I love a gig or show

where you already,

maybe you don't necessarily have like massive expectations, per se, but where you already have context for that person.

Yes.

Because it means you can kind of get into the meat of it of why you're there more quickly, both as a performer and as an audience.

You're already invested.

And that's half the battle.

Oh, yeah.

And it's even like when I did a one-off gig at the Melbourne Comedy Festival, that was me hosting an event, but I still went out to do a bit of stand-up at the top with the audience.

And that, you could argue, that's very similar.

But that's like hundreds of people,

but

there's different expectations at a gig like that.

Yep.

Because they're like, well, whoever's booked must be okay.

Otherwise, they wouldn't be doing this.

Yes.

And they were kind of in for a nerdy-ish variety night-ish thing.

Yep.

And probably just enough people as I walked out and went, oh, it's that guy from number file.

And that's kind of fine.

And that, great, blew the doors off that gig.

This one, doors remain firmly attached

throughout.

Did you just sort of open it a little bit?

No, no, I might have cracked a window.

Oh, wow.

You know, when the audience is not with you.

Yeah.

And you can just feel that inertia.

Do you think later when people were talking about the gig, had they remembered you in the first place, they would say they would refer to you as that maths guy.

100%.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Now, for the record, I got laughs.

Like, I wasn't like, oh, I'm not saying, no, no, you said it was adequate.

I didn't bomb, it was adequate.

It was adequate.

I didn't embarrass myself or the institution.

Yeah, you didn't blow the roof off, but you also didn't just destroy the place.

No, I didn't ruin the vibe.

That's right.

Fine.

I didn't go up there and suck all the atmosphere out of the way

and leave with it.

You neither sucked nor blown.

I didn't do either of those things.

The pressure in the room was incredibly consistent.

how have you been yeah good i've also been doing previews and working on my show and everything like that yeah it's my first time

as well doing a solo show since 2019 yeah but i'm looking forward to it i'd like the i'm i'm i'm enjoying i'm now in that zone where i'm starting to enjoy it i'm having fun yeah i'm probably a couple sets behind you i'm just meta confident Like I'm confident I'll be confident in the future.

I should be working more on my actual show, not on my type 10 that I'll be doing on the side.

I think it all helps.

I think so.

How much has the show changed since you were doing it out in Australia?

It has changed a fair bit.

It's got more jokes.

Oh, those?

Okay.

That's nice.

That happens over time.

Yep.

And

the show is sort of reflective of where I'm at in my life.

And I've already had like a bunch of things change.

Yeah, it's been interesting trying to work out what to keep in the show, what feels authentic, what.

All right, because the show was a snapshot in time.

Yeah.

And your life has already trundled on a bit since then.

Yeah.

Like, for instance, I talk about sleeping on an airbed in the show.

It's very funny.

But I can't remember if I've said this on the show.

I am now going to be staying put in the flat that I rented.

You got the flat.

Yes, yes.

And Gav is moving out.

All these decisions arrived at the perfect time for both of us.

Great timing, all round, very happy.

So now I know where I'm living.

And as soon as I realized, oh, I get to stay put, I was like, oh, well, I don't need an airbed anymore.

I can get a real bed.

Did you burst it?

Well, I then used it in my show.

Great, great, great, great, great, great.

It's not much of a spoiler, but in the opening of my show, I manually inflate an airbed

and I used it in my last preview.

But it's

not a full double, but it's also bigger than a single.

Right.

And it's deep.

Yeah, yeah, more than an airbed.

A buoy was okay.

I'm going to have to get a smaller one.

But now I'm like, oh, do I talk about sleeping on an airbed now that I'm on a real bed?

But it is funny.

I still, yeah.

You lived the airbed life.

I lived the airbed life.

You can still speak about it from a place of authenticity.

Yeah, thank you.

Let's do a show, man.

Our first problem comes from Steve.

Girl, Steve.

Good old Steve.

Steve says, how far away from the sun would I have to travel before I can look at it without eye damage?

Perfect.

Yeah, I love it.

Whole problem.

Good question, Steve.

I like to think that this is a problem Steve comes up with all the time.

I wish it was a practical issue for Steve.

Steve wakes up, looks directly at the sun.

Oh, my eyes.

This happens every day.

Sun moving.

Yeah, that's true.

So, you're not allowed to look at the sun because it will damage your eyes.

Yeah.

Do you want to have a guess why?

Ugly.

The sun is very ugly.

The sun is real ugly.

Is it to do with UV or radiation or something?

Yes.

Or, oh, no, wait.

Can I guess?

Yeah, yeah.

Is it basically the same reason as like magnifying glasses?

That is 100% part of it.

Like, will you set the inside of your on fire?

Yeah, you should have stopped a moment ago.

See, here's the thing.

So.

The sun's very bright, but you don't blind yourself just by

like the sun being in the sky and you look somewhere else in the sky.

Because we don't get blinded if we go outside with the sunlight.

It's only if you look directly at the sun.

And that's what you're saying.

That's the magnifying glass effect.

Yeah.

And I think your eyes are substantially stronger than a magnifying glass.

Like they're really good at focusing light.

So you're okay looking around the sun.

But if you look at the sun and it focuses it all in, that's when your eyeballs catch on fire.

Sorry, that isn't very.

You were trying so hard to not laugh and to look serious during the explanation

And at the end, I was like, I'm just gonna make a laugh

It's just

it's very cartoon-like

little smoke

coming out of it.

Yeah.

Anyone smell burning?

Oh my oost

now.

That said, that is slightly inaccurate.

Sometimes I look at the sun like, because I like a sunset.

You like a good sunset, yeah.

I love a sunset.

And that often does involve, like, trying to see where the sun is, yeah, the horizon.

So I can take photos, and so I'll do the squinty thing.

I squint through my eyelashes, and then I feel like it's okay to look at it.

And we were just out in Australia

on the west coast.

Loads of sunsets over the ocean.

Oh, yeah.

That's really nice.

But after a while, you're like, oh, I've been looking at the sun.

Like, at that point, though, it's going through a lot of atmosphere.

That's like the best.

Is that where

sunsets are okay to look at comparatively?

Not ideal, but

there's a lot being filtered out going sideways.

If you're looking straight at the Sun, like high in the sky, there's a lot less filtering, particularly in the visible.

Your eye, and now I'm not a medical person.

What?

As they're called.

And

biology is not my strong suit.

So I'm also going to mispronounce this.

No, don't take any of this as medical advice.

There's a thing called solar retinopathy.

Retinopathy.

Well, it'll be retina.

Yeah, retinopathy.

Retinopathy?

Because retina.

Retina.

Pathy.

What do you mean?

Your path.

Your retina.

And

that's basically damage to your retina because you looked at something too bright.

It doesn't have to be the sun.

It can be other bright things as well.

Historically, it's the sun, often during eclipses, because that's when people look at the sun.

And even though the sun's largely covered by the moon, until it's fully covered by the moon, it's still too bright to look at.

You're still going to damage.

You know another time where a lot of people are looking at the sun?

when's that in nativities

the son of god my goodness

you try and work with a professional

you should have just better specified what profession that's very comedy was a terrible choice

so

The and you might think the reason you're going to damage your eyeballs looking at something too bright is going to be like the heat, the catching on fire, the angle.

That's not the whole story.

So it's a complicated process.

And as well as just what they are calling photothermal effects, you've also got photochemical and photo mechanical mechanisms that cause damage to the retina.

And as far as I can understand it, the cells detecting light, they release chemicals to signal what they're seeing.

And if you hit them with that much light, they freak out and just dump all their signal chemicals all over the place.

And that you actually like, not poison is the wrong expression here, but you've suddenly got this flood of chemicals that damages your retina.

Oh, so it's like

if you just put a sheet of normal paper into a Polaroid camera, that won't work.

Yep.

But if it's got all the chemicals, if it's the right film, then it will hold on to that paper.

If the chemicals at once will cause damage.

So you're going to be able to see the sun forever.

You basically just get a spot.

It's not even an after image.

It's just you've burnt that part of your retina.

But chemical burn, not heat burn.

You can't get heat burn.

Because you can get retina damage below energy or temperature levels that would cause thermal damage.

It can just be the signal chemicals.

Now, for the most part, if you do damage your retina, it tends to heal over about six months.

There's no cure.

Sometimes it's permanent.

Sometimes it will gradually heal.

So best case, don't do it.

Which is why Steve here going to great lengths to avoid it.

Yeah.

So, there's kind of the reason I looked this all up is I was like, okay, what am I trying to do to protect someone's eyes?

Is it just the amount of energy that's going in?

And that's not necessarily true.

It's just the amount of light as well that your retina's tuned to perceive.

Because we've evolved on a planet with a

star, like the Sun, that peaks in the kind of greenish range of frequencies around 500 nanometers, I believe.

And so life on Earth is evolved for that frequency.

It's also the one that gets through the atmosphere because we lose a lot of UV, most infrared, I think.

We lose a bunch on the way through the atmosphere.

But the stuff that gets through is the stuff we've been evolved for our eyes to be sensitive to.

So it's not a coincidence that

the

frequencies which would cause retinal damage because our eyes overreact also happens to be the frequencies that the atmosphere doesn't filter out because that's the reason why we are sensitive to those frequencies.

So it's a bit complicated.

I tried to work out do I have to care about the fact that what we're going to do here for Steve to get further away from the sun, we have to leave the Earth.

Which means it doesn't have a filter anymore.

Am I imagining we're going to put the Earth somewhere else?

Is it just the lights?

What is it?

Because partly, once you're outside the atmosphere, that's going to make a difference in terms of UV and infrared.

Yeah, question.

I've put my hand up.

When astronauts on the ISS

or indeed anything further than the stratosphere, is that where they are?

Are they above that?

They're above that.

They're above that.

They're low Earth orbit, so they're not that far.

They're no calculating pie on the moon.

Anyone who's outside of the Earth's atmosphere, any windows on those spaceships.

I like set spaceship.

Yeah.

Craft.

Full point.

Well, a space station or craft.

Yeah, they're all good.

They're going to have to have

lots of protective coding because of all of the radiation and everything

and if they're doing a eva an extra vehicle adventure i assume that's what it stands for now i i don't i don't recall ever seeing astronauts be like ah the sun no it's from the windows very thin layer of gold and it filters out yeah the gold visor or the gold tinting

pretty much protects us but back down to earth levels so you're probably it's still not advisable to stare straight at the sun okay so what i was trying to get at there is is Steve in a spacecraft or

just floating in space?

Let's assume wherever Steve is, he's got the gold tinting, so it's equivalent to being on Earth.

Okay,

just to avoid that complication.

Great.

So, now I had the issue of

how much

of the energy light from the sun do we get at the earth, and how many times smaller would that need to be to get it right down to the point where it's safe.

So, I tried two methods.

So, one option was to look up safety regulations around lasers in the kind of visible range to work out what an acceptable amount of laser light is to be safe to the human eye.

And take that as my reference point and work out how much dimmer than the sun that is, to then work out how far away it would need to be.

Ooh, okay.

And it's hard to get exact numbers on this because it's a different use case to looking at the sun.

I eventually found standard IEC six zero eight two five for laser safety.

And I found a plot that had a couple of different frequencies on it.

One of which, to be fair, I found the plot on Quora, which is the worst place to find information, but then tracked it back to their standard.

And roughly looking at it, you want to get about 0.001

watts per centimeter squared energy from kind of visible light

on your eye.

And the sun,

very vaguely, gives you 0.13 watts per square centimeter at Earth distances from the Sun.

So, all I had to do was work out, actually, it's an inverse square law.

One way I could do it is to work out the effective sphere over which all the Sun's energy is projected at the Earth's distance from it and then redo the calculation for further out.

But everything scales as the inverse of the square.

So, what I actually do is just take the square root of the multiplier, and that tells me how much further out.

It's a mathematical shortcut.

okay i i didn't understand any of it but i liked how you described it and you moved your arm so i think i understand yeah i felt good doing it the short version is if you want the roughly 13-ish fold reduction 10 or so

this is called 10fold reduction in light that means you need to be about three times further out because three squared is nine it's a bit over three to be about ten times further out and so i then looked up now conveniently the earth is one astronomical unit out from the Sun.

Yep.

Not by coincidence, that's astronomers being lazy.

And we want to be about three astronomical units out.

So Mars is not far enough.

That's only one and a half.

Yep.

Jupiter, too far.

Five times further out.

Yep.

We want to go in the middle.

Do you know what's in the middle between Mars?

And Jupiter?

Is it the Cupa Kuiper belt?

That's further out, good guess they.

But it's a belt, isn't it?

It's a belt.

It's an asteroid belt.

Yep.

And do you know what's in the asteroid belt?

No.

Yeah.

Is it the Matt Parker?

Asteroid Matt Parker.

Oh my goodness.

So it turns out.

If Steve

wants to get the sun down to safe viewing, we'll vacate to asteroid Matt Parker.

That's what you got to do, Steve.

Wow.

That's the place to be.

That's what you should be, rather than doing your moon pie,

you should be saying

plots of land on the Matt Parker asteroid.

Now, I do need to say, Steve, just so we're clear, asteroid Matt Parker is actually 2.4

astronomical units out.

So actually, you're only going to get a almost six-fold reduction.

That's probably enough.

I feel like the benefits of being...

Now you sound like a real real estate agent.

Exactly.

Yeah, I'm sure it's a little toasty.

I wouldn't look at it for too long.

And because it's in that belt, is it going like around the sun?

Yeah.

Yeah, it's not like.

No, it's orbiting the sun same as Earth.

Yeah, yeah.

Perfect.

So, and also, by the way, I was looking at figures for like thousands of seconds of exposure time.

So maybe just don't look at it for,

you know, a couple minutes is enough.

Yeah.

Don't go, don't go, don't go tens of minutes.

You'll be fine.

And now for completeness, I then did look up, you know, when there's a solar eclipse, you can get viewing glasses.

Yes.

Because you can get...

solar filters for telescopes and stuff, but that's different magnification to the human eye.

But there are glasses designed specifically for just putting in front of your eyes and staring at the sun for an unlimited amount of time.

Yep.

And I was like, okay, well, if these are designed to make it safe to look at the sun with everything the sun's giving off, I can look up how much they reduce the light by, and then you can just go that far.

Yeah.

Maybe overkill.

You don't get to go to Matt Parker.

But those glasses are under standard ISO, back with our friends at the ISO.

Ooh.

ISO standard 12312-2 standard for solar viewers.

This standard states that solar viewers cannot let in more than 0.0032% of visible light.

Okay.

So I then worked out, well, I took the square root of that.

I worked out how far away you need to be from the sun.

So if you looked at it, that's the amount of light you'd be seeing.

And that can be achieved at a distance of 177 astronomical units.

That's quite a bit further.

That's a lot further.

That's roughly where Voyager 1 is.

Right.

And that's been traveling for quite some time.

That's been going.

That was launched in the 70s.

Yeah.

It's been going for a while.

According to NASA, Voyager 1 is currently 167 astronomical units away, as opposed to 177 that we need.

Right.

Pretty much.

Pretty much.

So even the Voyager can't look at the sun directly just.

Not just yet.

Not just yet.

It's probably safe, but it's not at the ISO standard level of safe.

Yeah, so you've got to travel out for about 40 odd years.

Yeah, yeah, it's going to take a while, Steve.

Yeah.

Voyager was launched in 1977.

Yeah.

So coming up.

Coming up on 50 years.

Yeah, coming up on 50 years.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So I reckon 50 years is the end.

You have to go out 50 years, you know, Voyager style.

Then you look back, completely safe.

What's absolutely wonderful about that?

And Lucy mentioned this when I explained what I was going to talk about.

She was like, yeah, but that's outside the solar system because Voyager 1 has gone through the heliopause

outer definition of the solar system.

Right.

Which is where the sun's magnetic influence ends and it hits the interstellar medium.

I don't know what any of that means, but it sounds broad.

It's a long way away and it's outside the sun's magnetic influence.

Okay.

And so it means to be safe enough to see the sun, you need to be outside the solar system before you can turn around and safely stare at it to ISO standards.

It's almost as if the solar system has been designed

to

not let you look at the sun.

That's not how any of this works.

The sun is like, I will keep you.

I like what you're doing.

I will keep you.

You're allowed to orbit me, but don't look at me.

The sun is, but it really is a star.

It is a real prima donna.

Yeah.

That is as true as the eyeballs catching on fire analogy from earlier.

I'm sticking with it.

It's still a good comedy.

So there you are, Steve.

Your choices are: if you want to risk it, asteroid Matt Parker.

I mean, the difference is if you want to be safe, Voyager 1 and everywhere in between.

Imagine

practical advice.

Buying a plot of land on Asteroid Matt Parker.

Getting there.

Yeah.

I'm guessing it's...

I'm guessing it's cold.

Oh, yeah.

And so you do all of this and you're like, ah, finally, at least now I can look at the sun.

Mad Parker!

The numbers wrong.

The eyes are on fire.

Well,

I think that's.

I think you've

somewhere in there.

Somewhere in there.

Yeah, yeah.

I feel like I get some pretty generous error bars on where you need to be.

I'm going to give it a ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.

That's the sound of one of those old-fashioned fire engineers.

Oh, right.

Yep, yep.

Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.

uh next problem was sent in by someone named raphael who very kindly titled their problem made my menu item much easier yeah they have written just off by one error in anniversaries question mark and then you're like thanks yeah

problem named yeah thank you raphael now rapa's problem here is they're trying to convince their wife that they should celebrate their anniversary one day before the day we got married Ah, great work.

I would love where this is going.

So they have an example.

Now this may or may not be true, but they claim they were married on the 2nd of March.

Why would you cast doubt on that?

Let's start with EG.

So is that

your wedding as an example?

Well, they made up an example wedding.

I think they're more saying, like, for example, our wedding was on this date.

Yours probably isn't.

Oh, that's very trusting of you.

So, so Raphael's argument is, let's celebrate that on the first.

Raphael's wife disagrees.

Raphael's arguments at the word anniversary comes from the Latin for year.

Doesn't imply a date, but a time period, as opposed to birthdays, which are more about the day themselves.

Great argument.

I feel like Raphael's arguing with himself in

this problem.

So they think you should celebrate the completing of the year.

Got it.

They carry on.

To put it another way, if I say we'll do something every day for a week and start on a Tuesday,

they'll finish the following Monday, not on the following Tuesday.

Okay, so they're getting examples.

Now, Raphael, who may not be giving their wife the most accurate airing of their arguments,

dedicate a whole sentence to it, saying, meanwhile, my wife's arguments are tradition.

That's how everyone does it.

And please just be normal.

Great joke structure there, Raphael.

And they've asked if we could settle the debate, which, Beck, you're going to do.

Yeah, I'm sold.

I'm on Raphael's side.

Oh, dang.

That's why I'm saying that.

I should go team wife then, just to keep it interesting.

Yeah, I could, but I'm too much of a pedant.

I like this.

I agree.

Yeah, this.

It shouldn't be on.

Well, I hang on.

Actually, what I should specify, I'm with both of them.

My reason for that

is that it depends how you celebrate.

So it's fair enough to say that a wedding pretty much takes up a full day.

Okay, yes.

Yeah.

So

if you're if your wedding was like

relatively early

in the day, I'm going to count that as a full day, which means that

like by midnight the night before.

Right.

I think you've got like the previous full day to celebrate.

But I think if you had a past midday wedding,

then you could only celebrate up until the point that you got married.

Because I would argue you should celebrate at the point you got married because that's exactly a year.

But then you go into the

hour.

I think you should go up until the point that you got married.

Oh, so you're celebrating the arrival of it.

Yeah.

Or you could start celebrating then because we just finished a whole year.

Like you don't celebrate before you cross the finish line in a race.

Yeah.

You cross the finish line.

That's the exact time when you got married.

Yeah.

And then you celebrate.

Yeah.

I think it depends on the type of celebration.

I do see the argument for the last day of the year.

So I've got a wedding anniversary coming up this month.

Ooh.

Lucy and I, we will celebrate our 4,000-day wedding anniversary.

Ooh.

Which is very exciting.

Yeah.

Thousand days

wedding anniversary is the best.

And that is using a counting system where

we got married on like day zero.

And then you have day

one.

Yeah.

And then two.

And then all the way out to 4,000 days.

And so I think that's the superior way of doing it because that takes a lot of ambiguity out of it.

Yeah.

We do celebrate the 500-day in between points as well.

Don't worry, people.

Okay.

That's slightly, you know,

not as frequent as once a year.

It's a year and a bit.

So that would be my recommendation.

Yeah.

Do you know what?

I was so sure when I went into this where I was like, yeah, it should be the day before.

Yep.

But then as I was trying to explain it, I convinced myself, well, no, because

that's the day you got, you started to get married on that day.

But I, but I think if you want to be a pedant, I think it should be up until the point you got married because then you've completed a full year.

Okay, you're a celebrate as you approach the line.

Yeah.

And then stop when you get there.

Yeah.

I'd be a celebrate once you're there and afterwards.

Yeah.

Which is not the argument Raphael's having.

No.

We are both on team wife.

Yeah, because I've now flipped a team wife do you want because i you could even argue once you're passing the the like the line yep you can celebrate and go yeah it's now been a full year doing it the next day then it's like a year and a day and a bit or whatever so up until midnight but then you might as well just say it's that date yeah no i'm i'm now back onto team i think I think your wife's arguments that you've provided are incorrect.

I don't believe in doing things for tradition or that's how everyone else does it.

But I do think accidentally your wife is correct because if you celebrate the day before, unless you got married at midnight

going into your wedding day,

then

you are celebrating too early.

You haven't completed a full year.

And your argument was that it's a full year.

Yeah.

So, because I think we've had this chat before about

warranties or like return.

There was a story in Humble Pie about a mathematician called Jim Prop who had a mobile phone contract where there was a return window.

And the way the mobile phone company counted days was different to how regular humans would count days in basically exactly this

situation.

I forget it was like a week or 10 days or something.

Might have been two weeks.

Jim got the phone, had two weeks to return it, brought it back within, strictly speaking, two weeks from the time he took the phone from the shop.

But because they counted that first day as one,

they counted it the day before the Raphael system.

That's when they counted it as finishing.

By that same argument that Raphael is saying, if you say, I'm going to do this for a week and you start on Tuesday,

you'll finish on the following Monday, not the following Tuesday.

Because you've done a week.

That means you need to count the entirety of the first day of it.

There are also different things.

Like if you say, oh, I'm going to do something every day for a week,

that is an action that you are repeating

each day.

So that makes it you're doing seven actions over seven days.

But an anniversary isn't an action

like in that sense.

It is a celebration of the completion of something.

Yeah.

That's why I think you celebrate after you cross the line.

Yeah.

I'm quite, I've already, I get, this is a classic Beck thing.

I come in so, the hubris I have is so strong.

Yeah.

And I come in, but I will say that I am,

while I am very hubristic, I think that's a word.

I mean, you would think that.

Yeah, exactly.

I am as just as

humble as I am hubristic.

Because I will back down.

Oh, you do.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

With such variety.

You will not dig in.

You'll be like, oh, oh, you know what?

Yeah.

No, you won't.

You give it a moment, and then you'll be, oh, yeah, maybe there's something else.

No, I am staunchly correcting myself.

And I've properly, I don't think there's anything wrong with flip-flopping.

But I will say that it is teaching people not to trust my first instinct.

Oh, no, it's just, you know, I think it's a better role model for updating your beliefs when things change.

Yeah, thanks.

Wow.

So you've settled the debate forum.

You've lived both sides of the debate.

Yeah.

You embodied the entirety of this debate.

And you agree with Raphael's wife.

I mean, technically, I agree with neither of them.

Marriage is a construct.

No point celebrating.

Sure.

Oh, yeah, but that's

there's more to unpack there than we can in one podcast.

Love is an action, not an achievement.

I hope that they continue to find joy in debating this.

I hope so.

Now, who needs to ding it?

Do we need Raphael or Raphael's wife to

adhere on if we're going to do this one?

I guess we need both.

We need both.

I need to agree on something.

Yeah.

Have we managed to convince either of you?

Okay.

Have we accidentally been marriage counselors?

Wouldn't it be great if

we've managed to get either one of them to agree with the other, thus prolonging their marriage?

Yeah.

Thus prolonging the amount of anniversaries they get to celebrate.

Yeah.

You're welcome.

Or they will continue to argue and divorce and they never have to worry about it.

Yeah.

Keeps things spicy.

And in any other business or any other batchness.

We're still doing the batch cooking theme.

I've dropped it.

I always forget that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I would like to use any other batchness to just repromote our Edinburgh Festival fringe shows.

Thanks, Matt.

Please come and see both of us.

You can see us both.

You can,

not on the same night.

No.

Because we clash.

Yes.

It's very sad.

Can't see your show.

But you can see us on consecutive nights at the fringe.

In my case, you can go to standupmath.com slash shows.

And in Beck's case,

you can go to the Gilda Balloon website.

Just Guilda Balloon.

I think I get slightly more ticket money if you book the tickets through the Gilda Balloon website.

Yeah, I get more money if you go via Pleasants than if if you go via the fringe.

Yeah, we'll make sure those are the links in the show notes.

Yep.

Mine is at seven o'clock at Guildaballoon Appleton Tower.

That's Guess Who's Back Back Again.

Beckles Back Tell a Friend.

And I'm only doing a part run.

I'm doing, I think, the last three weeks.

So, or two and a half weeks, sorry.

So from the 9th of August.

So don't run up there too quickly.

You just.

You're always missing me.

I'm there the whole time.

Yep.

Specifically, I'm at 6.30 in Pleasants Courtyard at Pleasants Beyond doing Getting Tricky With It.

And then I'm on tour afterwards.

Yes, you are.

So, if you go to centermas.com/slash shows, you will get all the tour shows.

I've only announced the first nine that'll be in the autumn, but there'll be more to come.

Come in, it'll be a lot of fun.

After every show, I'll be around to sign calculators as always.

Yeah, I look, I will sign calculators

if you want.

I wouldn't recommend it.

Tupperware, I'll sign you topperware.

Don't know why with bolognese.

So orange.

Now, back on to our other, any other business we heard from, yes, that old guy who

posed the problem about dice in episode 110.

They said, ding.

Do you like the answer?

Great.

They said, however, yes, that old guy is actually formatted in Pascal case, not camel case.

That's true.

And I have noticed that.

When they've spelt out Pascal case, it's one word, but with the P and the C

capitalized.

Yep.

When, yes, that old guy says camel case, I've noticed that camel is lowercase, but the C in case is uppercase.

Now, this makes sense.

It's got one hump in the center.

Camel case technically doesn't have the first character capitalized.

Right.

I use it as a catch-all for all of these no spaces, but capitalization.

As do a lot of people.

Bumpy case.

Some people call it bumpy case.

Roller case is.

That's just pec.

Roller case is very good.

And I would say most people just call everything camel case for this.

But technically, in the same way that people are like, technically,

it's a die, not dice.

Camel case doesn't include where you capitalize the first letter.

And I thought at the time, I thought that, and I was like, it's one thing too many.

And I couldn't remember what you call it when you do capitalize the first letter.

But yes, that old guy has confirmed it's Pascal case.

Pascal doesn't have the Pro Pascal.

Pedro Pascal.

Yeah, the name of the Pedro Pascal.

Pedro Pascal case.

Yeah, so they are.

Technically, Pascal case.

Every day is a school day.

They also go on to say, I really like the idea of shaving down an ice cream cone.

I might go that way.

Thanks.

Oh, and for the record, yes, the old guy is not the only person who pointed out it's technically Pascal case, not Camel case.

So thanks to everyone else who chip that in.

Yes, someone else pointed out snake case is when you've got an underscore

in between.

I've not heard that.

And kebab case is when there's a dash, when there's a high phone.

In between.

that's lovely.

Although there's no,

I'm noticing no capital letters in either of those, so I don't know how I feel about that.

Speaking of that particular episode,

we also heard

from Dr.

Wen.

Dr.

Wen.

Or Dr.

Ven, W-E-N-N.

And they've just immediately started with credentials.

Mathematician who collects dice and grew up in Las Vegas.

Great, love it.

Re-dice balancing.

They said casinos balance their dice by filling in the pips with a different coloured but equal density material.

Yep, a few people wrote in to say that.

Yeah.

So, yep, love it.

But Dr.

Weng goes on.

Re,

fair distribution of numbers.

Oh, yeah.

One reason to prefer distributions that balance the average value around each vertex is to foil sneaky dice rollers who can throw dice in a way, spinning them, that biases one part of the die over another.

You can also fight this the way casinos do by requiring that the dice bounce off a bumpy wall.

The old angular momentum method.

Yeah, I was not aware of this.

I don't go to casinos enough.

I think

we covered this very slightly talking about shapes of dice where if there's a preferential axis of rotation, it'll bias

certain regions or bands, I guess.

They finally say re dice

in quotations versus die as a singular.

While I feel like things would be a lot less confusing if we all used dice instead of die as the singular, I don't think that that we've quite achieved that yet.

Oh, what?

A quick search of the BYU web corpus.

Do you know what that means, Matt?

No, but the web corpus would be a massive database of text scraped off the web.

Producer Laura says it might be Brigham Young University in Utah.

Who knows?

Who knows?

Who knows?

All I'm saying is, I'm saying dice as a public figure to try and balance those odds a little.

And all I'm saying is,

I'm very happy with.

You don't care.

No, I'm very happy with the other things that Dr.

Wen said.

I find that very useful.

I also think everyone who is

providing a solution, which we didn't necessarily ask for,

and there are some good ones in there.

They're great.

I don't want to discourage anyone from doing this.

We've got seen a lot of interesting things that relate to probability.

I don't want to discourage anyone from doing this.

But I think there should be a new rule set that if you are going to do it, you should start your solution with credentials and tell us why

why you're bringing this to the table yeah because if you're if you're just having a guess like we are credentials start your own podcast thought about it

yeah we're a monopoly on having an uneducated guess

we don't need to outsource that

because i genuinely love a lot of the answers that people send us and i'm i'm always amazed i still always come to my mind the when i i thought i'd solve the problem about whether you could fly a plane on the on the Autobahn

and got such great answers back.

So yeah, I don't want to put anyone off, but I would love your credentials.

Speaking of the listeners and how grateful for you we are.

Oh yeah, we are.

First of all, if you want to help the show, tell people to listen.

It's really useful.

Well, most people come here from word of mouth.

You can talk about it on your various social medias or Slack channels, Discords, wherever you are.

Tell folks to listen to a problem squared.

And if you are in a position to help us financially, please sign up for our Patreon.

Give us a patreon.com forward slash a problem squared.

Correct.

There is a link in the show notes as well, just to make it easy.

We could only keep this running through our Patreon supporters.

Otherwise, we cannot justify doing it.

So we really appreciate your help.

And if you do support us on Patreon,

there are many ways in which you are repaid.

Oh, mate.

As well as getting access to this podcast with no ads, you are perks, a sense of smugness, yeah,

but also you'll get access to our free bonus podcast, I'm a Wizard, amongst other things.

And on each episode, we choose three of our Patreon supporters at random and thank them by mispronouncing the names that they've given us.

And on this episode, those Patreon supporters are

B

IO

Miweenie.

God, I'm looking forward to this one.

Ian!

That's accurate.

That's accurate.

Okay, everyone, take 10 seconds to see if you can guess the name.

And the correct answer was John.

Can we hear that again, please, back?

Ian!

Matt Hayaz.

Matt Hayaz.

Hiya's a Matt.

That's what it's short for.

Or Hayaz.

Hiyaz.

I'd also like like to thank my co-host, Matt.

Hayaz, Parker.

That's me.

Who continues to sustain me like a thawed-out, heated

prepared meal.

And

to

the

recipe

that helps us put it all together.

and make sure that it's working and is healthy and well-balanced.

Producer Laura Grimshaw.

And I've been back hill.

Goodbye.

What's your move?

What's my move?

As if we don't know.

Oh.

I'll just move that right now.

And let me guess.

F

six.

That is correct.

Hit.

I knew it.

But no, not with a sinking sound.

Fascinating.

Now,

I had a system until I've realized you've clumped multiple boats up against each other.

You've gone ship to ship.

So I feel like I need to exhaust the perimeter of the ship mass.

So, can I have an E6?

Oh, miss.

Oh, a real grumbly miss.

Interesting.