100 = Orchestral Seats and Calculator Beef

I'm cracking into the matrix.

I know kung fu.

Oops, I just pressed a thing.

I know what I'm doing for sure.

Welcome to A Problem Squared, the problem solving podcast, which is a lot like the number 100,

because this is the 100th episode of A Problem Square.

There's now 100 of us.

Isn't that something?

Just 100 of us.

100 of us.

Oh my goodness.

Episode 100.

And to celebrate.

I told you that lead zero would be necessary one day.

We did.

Ah, here we are.

We're going to play every episode concurrently.

Concurrently.

Yeah.

In parallel.

Yeah.

Now.

I assume nothing happened because looking at producer Lauren's face right now, that's not on the cards.

So, first-time listeners, welcome aboard.

Good time to join us.

Yeah.

You're listening to me, Matt Parker, who, much like the number 100, is all about the ones and zeros.

I'm joined by comedian, performer, author Beck Hill, who much like the number 100, her nickname has a C in it.

Thank you.

Wow.

It's good.

Is it?

It is.

Is it?

Because you specifically spell Beck with a C.

Yes.

And 100 specifically spells itself as a C.

Yep.

And that's the joke.

No, I got it.

I got the joke.

But you were laughing.

I don't.

Huh.

Interesting.

On this episode, I'll be looking at what instrument you should play to get into an orchestra.

I've got some beef with Apple's scientific calculator update.

Oh, I think.

There is a mystery mat segment.

There's a mystery matt segment.

That's been added to the running order

episode 100 we're going all out okay yep well then maybe i'll add a segment too why don't you

that's the sound of me hurriedly typing something and there'll be any other business what a show

so bec have you been i wanted to show you something that angered me the other day okay so i saw this on the tube the other day just wanted to talk about it yes okay that's valid bec has sent me a photo she's taken on the tube which is the subway transport system in London, where they have ads above the seats.

Head height, if you're saying that.

Head height.

This is one for some kind of content, a CRM that's a customer relation manager or something like that.

Contact relation manager.

I don't know.

It's a business thing.

They've got a stock photo of a business person.

Yeah, I really feel like they just did a search for businesswoman.

Yes.

Yeah.

Real generic businesswoman.

White businesswoman.

Pointy.

Yeah.

White businesswoman in power suit pointing at thing.

But heels, because.

But heels.

Yeah.

She's still a lady.

She's an acceptable businesswoman.

Exactly.

They've gone with the slogan, line up the value.

I feel like that's important.

And they want to visualize that.

They've gone for knots and crosses.

And what I suspect has wound back up, and indeed I'm now finding pretty annoying,

is it's not a real game of knots and crosses now, is it?

Right?

No.

Exactly.

And it's not hard.

to come up with a real game of knots and crosses or one that looks like a possible plausible arrangement of noughts and crosses mid or end game so what this is is the standard nine square grid yep

there's five knots in a sort of diagonal cross fashion every square is filled yeah all nine that's the problem with this one yes and then there's four crosses that are sort of in the middle outer square could say circles or noughts

only likes going in the corners in the center

and crosses only goes for the edges.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Terrible strategy for crosses, if I may.

Yeah.

So because there's more noughts than there are crosses, we know this means that noughts went first.

Yes.

Normally you go middle spot, but you know what?

Let's go top left corner.

No move makes sense in this game.

Yeah.

Unless the challenge was whoever makes three in a row loses.

Yeah.

There's a name for that.

We happen to have your friend of mine, Katie Steckles, in the room, who knows more about game theory than me.

Isn't there a...

what's it called?

The Mazaire version.

So, the Mazaire version of a game is where you flip the script and say, whoever achieves the thing that normally wins loses.

Do you have to force them into winning?

Yeah, so you're trying to duck around accidentally winning the game, winning.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Which I think we maybe lightly covered on when we talked about

the better version of knots and crosses.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So you could argue they were playing the mazaire version of knots and crosses.

Yes.

We could.

It's still terrible.

Yeah.

You're right.

Maybe that is it.

Because at the

played badly.

What they've done is they've drawn a line through the top left to the bottom right diagonal of the knots.

They haven't drawn a line through the other three knots that are lined up there from the top right diagonal down to the bottom left.

Which means we can forensically work out.

The center must have gone in last, and they've picked one of the two sets of three it made simultaneously.

Yeah.

But the steps leading up to that are ambiguous.

Yeah, because if you went naught in the top left and then across in

the next square over to the right, doing the inverse trying to lose to win, but that doesn't really mesh with their slogan, line up the value.

Yeah.

They very much have this to indicate lining up the value.

Yeah.

And all your big business contacts, you've got to close.

And the copy says, just one supplier, one sign-on, and one interface.

You'll soon be onto an all-round winner.

Makes no sense.

Anyway, so that's that's what I've got.

That's my chat.

For the 100th episode, that is my chat.

Beef with some bad tic-tac-toeage.

So I might be in a similar boat.

Oh.

Because you started with beef.

I had some beef recently.

So there's a nerd called Randall Monroe who does the XKCD comic for people who are familiar with the sick figure comic.

Yes.

And they are an order of magnitude bigger nerd celebrity than me.

It's a different medium.

Oh, I didn't.

The argument wasn't whether they're cooler than you.

Of course they're cooler than you.

They're a bigger nerd celebrity.

They're great.

Anyway, I was doing some shows with Randall, who has a book out called What If?

And the 10th anniversary edition was coming out, so we did...

some shows together promoting the book in front of very nerdy audiences which was a lot of fun i had a great time

Randall's exactly as nice and as nerdy as anyone would ever expect.

You wouldn't work with them if they weren't.

Precisely, as you only work with wonderful people.

You only have space in your life for one jerk, and that's me.

Yeah, exactly.

And that's because you're trying to slowly convert everyone one by one.

You become a cool person.

Yeah.

And then I bring in a new jerk.

It's like my fair lady, but for jerk.

Exactly.

So, as part of the show, we take questions from the audience about either Randall's career or things in the what-if books.

So someone sent in, anonymous.

this is addressed to Randall.

Of all the improbable things you've written about, how did you come to the belief that making tea in a microwave is acceptable?

And then they wrote citation needed.

And they're referencing, this is from the book, What If, the first one.

So in passing, Randall mentioned, and if people are unfamiliar with this, in America, people don't own kettles.

No.

They microwave water to make tea.

Or they boil it on the stove.

Or they boil it on the stove.

They do have kettles, but they're stovetop ones.

Sometimes.

If they have them at all, yes.

And so I then got Randall to step through his tea-making process, which is to get a mug of water.

Or they have a coffee machine that does hot water.

It's getting worse.

In Randall's defense, he's like, I've already got a microwave.

Heats the water fine.

I know how long it takes.

Put it on.

Water boils.

Then they take it out, put the tea bag in.

Tea.

The audience is aghast

because this is a British audience, some of whom have only just learnt that Americans make tea and microwave, and everyone else is reminded anew that Americans make tea and microwaves.

Or that they don't make tea at all.

Or they don't make tea at all.

Deeply upset at this prospect.

Now, Randall then has to defend himself.

I'm on the side of that is outrageous.

Now, Randall makes a perfectly good point.

You're still just boiling the water.

Yeah.

And I realized in that moment, because I was then saying, I was like, no, it matters.

The water remembers.

And I never expected myself to take a pro homeopathy stance yeah yeah i'm like the water knows it remembers what you did to me there is a weird thing that as soon as you said that microwave the water my brain went oh no

i would argue that in a place especially like london with very hard water yeah a lot of lime scale is that it does mean that you're going to have a lot more lime scale still in like in the in the kettle it gets caught by the little mesh thing.

And

would it even come out if you're microwaving it?

Like a kettle, you get the scale buildup over time.

You're not going to get scale build up in the microwave.

Or you reckon you get that weird skin

thing that you get at the top, maybe.

I don't know.

But he was right.

I hate to say it.

I think the difference is, and you mentioned this, Americans don't drink that much tea.

It's less culturally ingrained.

If you're making tea, it's an occasional mug for yourself.

Whereas in the the UK and Australia, if you're making tea, you're making it for a bunch of people all the time.

And having a kettle makes way more sense.

Like if you're making tea in the microwave, you've got to put it in one at a time or try and nuke a bunch at once, which doesn't work that well.

So I think it's born out of how infrequently they make tea and it tends to be one mug as opposed to in the UK where you put the kettle on to make several cups of tea.

Yeah.

I'm just going to check in with Katie, who probably has comments on this.

So I know the science reason why it's worse.

So I did an event at Cheltenham Science Festival several years ago with a tea scientist from like a big tea company.

When you boil the water, it brings the oxygen out because it's dissolved in the water.

So this is the reason why you should never boil a kettle again, because then the second time you boil it, there's no oxygen in the water and it doesn't make good tea.

So tea that's been boiled once to 100 degrees and then used immediately will make really nice tea because it's just got the right amount of oxygen left but if you boil it again it takes too much out and the microwave will heat it past 100 or it'll heat it really unevenly and some parts of it will go really really hot and what have you and it beverages out and you get water that's roughly the right temperature but it isn't right like it takes out much more of the oxygen wow that unexpected guess KD everyone that also explains

if I haven't used up all the water in the kettle I just boil it again because sometimes the water in there has probably been boiled like three or four times yeah I'm not surprised.

But I also don't drink tea.

Oh, there you go.

I'm usually like boiling it for, I don't know, cleaning purposes or whatever.

Now, the problem is, in our first 100 episodes, we open the can of if you put a spoon in sparkling wine, does it stop it from going flat?

Yeah.

And we need to do a bigger double-blind test on that.

Because the results we got back was it does stop it from going flat.

Yes.

Which we were both terrified by.

And I haven't, I've got plans.

We will re-explore that.

We haven't done it yet.

What we'll need to do is an experiment where we make a bunch of tea with freshly boiled water and multiple boiled water and then see if we can taste the difference between them.

Yeah.

And then if we confirm, yes, the multiple boils gets rid of the oxygen, you can taste the difference.

Yeah.

Then we need to do like a microwave one where you might make some tea in the microwave and some with the kettle and see if we can tell the difference.

Yeah.

It'd be interesting to see whether I can tell the difference.

Yes.

That is a problem for a future episode.

I like it though.

There you go.

It's more affordable than champagne.

It's a way cheaper experiment than last time.

Yeah.

On with the episode.

First problem was sent in by Eleanor, who is a Patreon of the show.

Unrelated to the urgency with which we treat problems sent in, but nice to know.

Yes.

They went to the problem posing page at a problemsquared.com.

Thank you, Eleanor.

They start by saying that they played the flute in school, in their school band, many bands, for many years.

And they always told themselves it was hard to be a flutist.

Is that pronounced correct?

Flutist?

Flutists?

Yeah.

Flautists.

Hard to be a flautist.

Because there are so many of them.

Flautists for days.

Which meant there was a lot of competition for seats.

Now, they're not just talking about the fact that when you come into the band rehearsal, everyone wants to sit down.

Like a music seat has a very specific definition.

So the word flutist was first recorded in the Oxford English Dictionary in the 1603 edition.

Oh, wow.

So they reckon.

1603.

Yeah, they reckon it probably didn't come into existence until the late 1500s.

Radio.

It was first mentioned in literature in Chaucer's The House H-O-U-S of Fame,

which came out in 1384.

Whoa.

The instrument obviously has been around for longer.

Yep.

It dates back to at least 43,000 years ago.

What?

That's a long time.

I can't see anything else about that, which makes me worry.

They must have found an old flute.

Yeah.

Or something flute-like.

Because it having been popular in Europe, many people throughout the continent fell in love with the flute, which has often held an enchanting role in popular culture.

Right.

Now, flautist, F-L-A-U-T-I-S-T, didn't come about until 1860 in Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Marble Fawn.

They reckon it was influenced by the Italian term flautista.

Oh.

Well, I don't give a flute because

none of that is Eleanor's question.

Now, Eleanor's problem here pertains to seats.

That's in terms of the instruments that are in an orchestra.

Right.

So how many flute players you have?

You go, ah, we got...

three flute seats.

None of that's strictly how people would say it, but you get the idea.

Now, they were saying that being a flute omatist is difficult because there's so many of them, but there are more flute seats than there are seats for, say, oboists.

So, if you were going to choose to play an instrument based on the highest ratio of available seats in a band or orchestra compared to the number of people competing for those seats, what would be the best instrument to choose?

Beck, you've solved this problem.

Yes.

Great.

Tell us all about it.

Well, firstly, I spoke to my friend Renata, who studied classical music.

She explained that when a lot of composers were employed by royal families, they would compose the pieces in their minds and like would want them, obviously, to sound as perfect as possible given the venue.

So yeah, so sometimes they would change it.

depending on the space that they were playing in to make sure it could sound as good as possible with with the space that they were afforded.

So they might change the arrangement in terms of what instruments play what and everything based on that.

So they walk into a hall and they're like,

this is a three oboe concert hall.

We need that extra oboe to really make this room sing.

Yeah.

She said sometimes if an opera or concert had a longer popular run, those scores slash transcription would survive and that amount of instruments or players would be the way things would be done moving forward.

Right.

So it's not so much as an orchestra has three cellos and that's just the way it's always done.

It changes.

It can change.

Yeah.

I did also find this from professional cellist Yvonne Carruthers, who said, when I got my job in the National Symphony Orchestra in 1978, the music director just initiated a new policy to have rotational seating.

I think the Boston Symphony was the first major orchestra to experiment with it, but the idea was so popular that soon almost all major orchestras used it.

With the old system, new players sat at the back, supposedly to gain experience, only inching forward one seat at a time when someone died or retired from that section.

Oh, wow.

I guess like playing Space Invaders.

So you'd be like the fourth seat or whatever, and you're like, come on, hurry up and die.

Exactly.

So if one says that was not a healthy situation, everyone knew it.

Can you imagine being stuck next to the same person for your entire career?

Oh, my goodness.

Imagine having to sit next to someone for five five years, 100 episodes, never a change.

We can rotate.

We can rotate.

We could, we could, we should sit over there.

Yeah, are you?

So an algorithm was developed

to ensure the rotational system is as fair and random as possible.

I want to know what that algorithm is now.

We trade seats every two weeks in the National Symphony Orchestra, but I don't know if other orchestras do.

Likewise, I might be sitting under the conductor's nose for two weeks and then assigned to seat right next to the stage door for the next two weeks.

I like all the seats.

Rotating allows me to enjoy each of my colleagues for two weeks.

That's about right.

If we're not getting along just then, well, it's only two weeks.

If we like sitting together and are getting too chummy, that only lasts for two weeks as well.

I believe rotational seating spreads out the strong and the weak, the more experienced with the less experienced, and builds a more cohesive sections.

Love it.

For what it's worth, I've never heard of a professional orchestra where the section leaders of the string section sit anywhere other than right up front.

Oh, now there's instrument beef.

Yeah.

So I reached out to a conductor.

Yep.

Ben Jannon.

Yep.

Is a conductor and also one of the hosts of Tom Allen's Monsters of Music podcast, which I may have guested on.

Oh, there's talking about Puccini.

I reached out to Ben and said, can you help answer this question?

Ben's answered.

And I thought that was better than any Google I could do.

The founding principle of this podcast.

So Ben said, in an orchestra, my chances of career success would be greatly improved by playing the violin, as there's normally around 30 of them.

30 of them.

You can sit on the back desk and play crap.

Joking aside, the competition is high.

Oh.

You could play the viola because no one else wants to.

So I was thinking, 30 seats for violins, that's a lot.

But a lot of people learn the violin.

Yeah.

Popular instrument.

With viola.

Easier to carry around.

Easier to carry around.

Viola?

Yeah, viola.

Viola?

Voila.

People are not chomping at the bit for the voila.

Similarly, tuber is good if you can be bothered to lump the heavy metal around the tube.

Oh, yeah, the drummer of the orchestra world.

Ben's added, although there is only one tuber seat in an orchestra, and they don't play in half of the repertoire because it didn't exist.

So easy job if you can count.

Percussion would be a good one because modern pieces need loads of players to cover the menagerie of sounds and kitchen sinks.

And you get paid extra for setting up/slash hit the cymbal at the big moment.

Oh, that's interesting.

Pressure money.

Oh, gosh, how much do I want to do that now?

Yeah, there's in your career.

Woodwind, I would avoid at all costs.

Oh,

as there's only normally a pair of each.

Flutes, bassoons, clarinets, and winds.

And often people hold on to these seats for life, even if decline in virtuosity has set in.

Yikes.

They said I have the wood.

Does that answer, or have I gone off on a tangent of prejudices?

That's what we're here for.

Now, it's not a mathematical answer.

But I feel that with someone who's had extensive experience with orchestras,

that that's a pretty solid one.

If your main motivation is the minimum competition per seat,

final answer?

Viola.

Viola.

According to a conductor.

Done.

Great.

Now there's probably a mathsy reason.

Yes, because what you would want is data on how many people learn each instrument and then the average number of seats each instrument gets in various pieces and orchestras or whatever.

Yeah.

And divide one by the other and then sort

by smallest.

And I thought that would be be relatively easy.

I'm pretty good at finding sources of data, but all I kept finding was news articles that mentioned in a study or

according to research, but then no

links to the research.

No, so I don't actually know what numbers.

I've seen percentages, but that's not the same.

I think going straight to the expert was the winning move.

Yeah.

And I do feel like knowing the listeners of this podcast, if anyone out there knows where we could find some

send us the data, We'd love to hear it.

Yeah.

Could you play any instruments, Matt?

Nope.

No, neither can not well.

Not well.

Can you?

No.

I was telling you before we started recording that one of my bucket list things is to learn the intro to Grieg's concerto.

Yep.

The one from the Morcombe and Wise sketch.

If you could play any instrument, what would you play?

I could play any instrument.

I mean, piano is good because there's always pianos around.

Anything involving a keyboard, I'm I'm pretty on board with.

I love a cello.

I can buy a Casio keyboard.

You want an extra faxing as this is the main problem?

Here's one more fact.

The seating

for orchestras, there's a theory here that originally it was just done because your right ear has an advantage for high tones.

What?

So seating for higher instruments is usually on the left side.

And that wasn't necessarily done with that in mind.

Yeah.

But it was done for this is how it sounds best.

And then they've gone,

oh, we've also discovered this, which is probably why people think it sounds best.

Well, I'll be.

Well, I'll be

well, Beck, I feel like you went straight to the experts and you got us an actionable answer.

So, I'm going to give you a triangle in the orchestra.

Ding.

Ah, thank you.

I'm conducting.

Hey,

even better.

This next problem is not in the running order, order, so I can't read it out.

It just says iPhone calculator.

Yes.

This is your own problem.

It's me.

This is you.

Okay.

I stand to the end.

Do you remember when we first started the podcast?

Yes.

Given this is the 100th episode.

We should look back.

Yeah.

We used to solve four problems an episode, which is too many.

I can't believe that.

We were foolish.

Two from listeners and two from each other.

We would set problems that we would then solve.

And then we realized we're taking way too long to do all that.

And it's too much.

Let's just do listener once.

So we stopped doing our own problems.

But I thought, just for old time's sake.

Okay.

One of my absolute favorite things about an iPhone

is if you open up the calculator app,

which is just like a standard calculator, and you turn your phone sideways,

it becomes a scientific calculator.

Yes.

Which I think is just the greatest thing ever.

I went for lunch with your friend of mine, Dr.

Carl.

Oh, yes.

In Australia.

Dr.

Carl is a longtime science communicator in Australia, wonderful guy.

I went on his Triple J show, which is a very surreal experience.

Yeah.

As an Australian who grew up

with Dr.

Carl on Triple J to now be there in the room is something else.

And at lunch, I showed him that if you turn your phone sideways, it becomes a scientific calculator.

And he lost his mind.

He'd never seen it.

Yeah.

He thought it was incredible.

And i still marvel at it every single time you've checked your phone what does it do yeah i have an android yep here we go and it's turning on on the side

scientific calculator yeah there it is now the other reason why i love this is because if you turn it on its side and you get the full scientific calculator

and then you hit rand it's got a random number generator what so i use this all the time Because my brother and I,

because he lives in Australia, I live in the UK, but we meet up whenever we're both in the same country and we go out a bunch.

Over the course of our lives, we would have this conversation so many times if we had not come up with a wonderful solution to the problem, which is every time we buy drinks or food, right when you go to pay, not before, so everyone's locked in on what they're ordering, we generate a random number on my phone.

And if the lead digit is odd, Steve pays.

And if it's even, I pay.

Okay.

It's super convenient.

It's wonderful.

You guys could just flip a coin, but sure.

No, no, no.

This is way more subtle.

Like if you walk up to pay at a restaurant and then you flip a coin, that's that's a whole whereas we walk up and just very subtly, we both look down, random number, we nod.

One of us is like, I got this.

And then we're done.

A hundred percent easier than flipping a coin.

All right, sure.

Yesterday,

we needed to generate a random number at home.

I can't remember why.

Lucy got her phone out, turned it sideways, and it didn't become become a scientific calculator.

It just became a widescreen regular calculator.

And she's like, oh, I think I updated the operating system.

So I just thought we could, and this is how you're going to help me with this problem.

I'm going to live update the iOS on my phone.

Okay.

And then we're going to see

what happens to the calculator.

Now, if that's not good podcast content,

I don't know why.

Hey, Matt, Matt, you're forgetting.

We are also filming this.

It's also great online content.

Great online content.

So, software update.

Here it is.

I haven't got iOS 18.1.1.

It is already downloaded, though, so this shouldn't take too long.

Install now.

I'm going to agree to the terms, even though I don't know if they've changed the calculator, which would change if I agree or not.

I love that that's the biggest worry that you have.

That is.

It's not my own privacy.

like my data.

Yeah, yeah.

We've got to clone you after you.

We're using you to train AI, but.

Okay.

Is verifying the update?

Sure.

You know, Steve has never audited or verified.

I haven't found a way to fake the random numbers for him to pay more often.

You could get a coin.

I could stop suggesting.

I did suggest that we do a memorial coin, a commemorative coin.

Is this how you announce that you're leaving?

My cousin's dead.

No, I'm dying.

She died of boredom waiting for this.

Well, now we've got the progress.

Yeah.

This is exciting.

For some definition of exciting.

We're building.

We're doing 100 episodes.

This is what we've done to celebrate.

I could have done this in advance, but it wouldn't be authentic.

I'm going to have a biscuit.

Yeah, can we get biscuit?

Yeah, please.

Don't give one to the dog, no

I'll give the dog a sleep

Should have brought my coffee up

Tell you what

given this has progressed so little It's barely

barely moved along we could do my surprise segment now

and then come back to the update.

Oh, my gosh.

Okay.

I hope it's still loading by the time we finish the other segment.

Okay.

Surprise segment.

For our 100th anniversary.

Yes.

I thought I'd bring back our favorite guest character.

No, it's not.

Oh, my gosh.

Oh, I thought it was Glam.

I thought it was Glam.

Glad the calculator would have been very funny.

Oh, imagine if your phone updates.

It's like, hi, I'm Glenn.

That would be great.

No, it's Location Matt.

Oh, you know.

Yay!

Where two episodes ago, if you can cast your mind all the way back to episode 098.

Yep.

Location Matt was on location at a big thing.

Yes.

Went to the big ram.

Location Matt is once again live on location.

So, Studio Matt, handing over to On Location Matt.

Thank you, Studio Matt.

Yes, I am once again on location.

I'm in the town of Narrakup, which is way down in the southwest of Australia near Albany.

I say town, that's overstating things.

It's more of a small location, and I'm here for another big thing.

This time, I have found a big cricket bat.

I am looking at a cricket bat which is, I think, around about eight meters tall.

If I work it out properly, we will edit that in.

So it is definitely a big thing.

It's absolutely big and it has a big scale factor.

And it looks like a cricket bat.

That is a proper cricket bat-looking cricket bat.

And it is permanent.

Although, unlike other big things, this one's actually a replacement cricket bat.

So you can see over here

at the Narrakup Combined Sports Club.

And they have a big cricket pitch here.

And they've made a fence out of cricket bats.

So I'm looking at maybe

a hundred, 200 cricket bats that have been used as the upright supports in the boundary fence of the cricket pitch.

Very nice and they take donations.

So if anyone wants to send in a cricket bat, they will add it to the fence.

And apparently back around the year 2015, someone got in touch and said, I have a cricket bat to give you for the fence, but it might be a bit too big.

And that was the original big cricket bat that went in here.

It didn't last.

It was wood.

It deteriorated.

And so this is the replacement cricket bat.

We think this went in in 2022 so it's still reasonably new but looking at it that is absolutely built to last.

I can verify this is a great big thing.

Back to you in the studio.

Whoa!

It's a big cricket bat.

That's a big cricket bat.

About eight meters.

I didn't calculate it properly afterwards.

Thank you, location Matt.

Thanks, Location, Matt.

So, as is tradition.

He's so much happier than you.

He's having a great time.

He's wearing shorts.

Yeah.

He's in the sun.

He's his best life.

He really is.

Location, Matt.

Best Matt.

Now, Location Matt is standing by to answer your questions

about the big thing.

Okay.

So if you have any questions for Location Matt about the big cricket bat, go for it.

Okay.

Location Matt.

What is the cricket bat's name?

That is a great question, Bec, and I would love to answer it as always.

However, I think that was better handled by Studio Matt.

Over to you.

Oh, that's a shame.

Yeah, there was no mention of what its name is, if it has a name, and the place was completely deserted.

So we don't know if the bat has a name.

What's the bat made of?

That is a great question, Beck.

The original big bat was wood.

This one, however, is aluminium.

So on the back of it, you can see a local aluminium boat building company has sponsored it.

I guess they actually fabricated it and because they build their boats out of aluminium, this is an aluminium cricket bat.

For any American listeners, that's an aluminum

weird flat baseball bat.

Aluminum, as they say in the States.

Thank you, On Location Matt.

Is there a big cricket ball?

That is a great question, Bec.

I have had a good look around and unlike the Big Ram, I cannot see anywhere any related big balls.

It knows me so well.

On location Matt are you seriously just there for this?

Did you really drive all that way just to do this?

That is a great question Bec online it says it's only worth visiting if you're either a big fan of cricket or a big fan of big things and as a member of one of those categories I can confirm I think it is worth a visit.

I wouldn't go out of my way for this one but if you're you're driving to or from Albany in Western Australia, definitely check out the Big Cricket Mat.

How diplomatic.

Yeah, we're on the way to Albany.

It's on the way.

It's on the way.

I say we, like, on location, Matt and I were out there together.

Can I ask a final question?

Absolutely.

On location, Matt, did you get me a souvenir?

Thanks, Peck.

Not technically a question, but a joke.

And I want to acknowledge that joke.

And that was very funny.

Back to you, studio, Matt.

Yeah, it's always a joke.

Yeah, I see.

Yeah, exactly.

All right, I am.

The little big bat is a joke.

You might,

even if on location, Matt, if you can't answer this, I think you will enjoy answering this.

Okay.

How big would the pitch need to be?

The bit that you run down.

The cricket pitch.

The cricket pitch.

Big cricket fan here.

Just between the wickets.

Yeah.

How big would that have to be if you were playing with a bat this size?

It'd be eight times bigger than normal.

I thought it'd be nice to have.

That's actually a really easy answer.

Yeah, yeah.

If it's eight times bigger than a cricket bat, then everything else is eight times bigger.

Eight times bigger.

Yeah, that's the scale factor.

Yeah, I'll be honest.

I see what I did there.

Yeah, yeah.

It worked well though.

It's late.

Yeah, it's late.

It's been a long day recording our 100th episode.

Now, on location, Matt forgot to record an outro, but that's the end of that.

Bye, on location, Matt.

Yep.

So there you are.

The old OLM.

The old OLM.

So there you go.

That's another big thing.

Now, I don't want to ruin future surprises, but I might be out of big things.

But you're in Australia soon.

If only someone else is going to Australia.

Yeah, wouldn't that be great?

Yeah.

There you are.

So that's big excitement about big things for the 100th episode.

Meanwhile,

we're in.

It's doing the little hello animation.

Okay.

All right.

Let's get in here.

Software update.

Three.

Complete.

Okay.

We're going into the calculator.

Regular calculator.

Yep.

Turning it sideways.

Just a wider normal calculator.

Why would they do that?

I'm so angry right now.

So I guess everyone should get an Android.

Oh, now what they have done, in the bottom left-hand corner, there's a little calculator icon.

And if you tap that, you can switch to scientific calculator.

And you do it now.

And you go back up this way.

Still scientific.

Okay, that's a plus.

Let me try and articulate why I'm so upset about this.

No, I don't think you need to, but sure.

It's It's happening.

I think we're all pretty upset about this, to be honest.

I think we're all, the word this in that sentence means different things to different people.

So,

what upsets me about this is before, like a lot of people own iPhones.

I think we can all agree that's true.

Sure.

And it meant a lot of people who otherwise wouldn't own a scientific calculator were only ever one 90-degree rotation away from having it.

It was just there.

I liked living in a world where it normalizes all these cool things it can do including generating random numbers and i love that and now you you have to know the press no one's going to turn that on by default

here's my solution yep because i'm assuming you've posed this problem you want a solution to it you're correct everyone who is in this situation choose a little calculator icon switch to scientific

then it's the default right you've got to wait for part two of the solution sorry you're right now that we're all all aware of how this all of us have that yes next time your friend is like can you take a photo for me

go into their calculator app choose scientific calculators a default because they're not going to think to go and turn it off no

by proxy you will be defaulting everybody else's calculators no you're right before

yep you would have to turn it on the side yep to know that If you have made someone else's calculator by default, a scientific calculator.

it's always there.

They're always.

It doesn't matter what, whether which way they're holding it.

Why didn't Apple?

Arguably, it's better.

Why didn't Apple just make it the default?

Like, why is it starting the boring mode?

Because guys like me press the wrong button.

Oh, right.

And then suddenly, just while you're trying to calculate what the tip is.

Yeah, you've got the square root of it.

Yeah.

And then you're like, oh no, I've just cleared up my bank account.

I just don't like that there's a world where, wasn't it a wonderful world where we all had the same calculator?

Have we ever all had the same calculator?

My favorite calculator was solar-powered Smarties one.

Okay, valid answer.

No, M ⁇ Ms.

Sorry, it was M ⁇ M's.

And that was the reason that I preferred MMs to Smarties.

Oh, because they did a better calculator.

Yeah.

Great.

What's your favorite calculator?

Casio FX39.

It's the one with the physical switch to go between degrees and radians.

Classic.

Yeah, it's a good one.

Thank you for solving my problem.

I knew if I came, there'll be be a solution.

So everyone, if anyone leaves their phone unattended or you're taking a photo for them,

switch it into default scientific mode.

If you listen on Spotify, there is actually an option to comment on individual episodes.

Yep.

So if you've done this,

tell us.

Tell us.

Put a little comment up for this episode.

But if you want to review it on Apple, say...

This podcast changed my life.

Now I've turned on the scientific calculator mode on my

friends' phones.

And give us five stars.

And give us five stars.

Yeah.

And now it's time for any other bigness where we go through miscellaneous things people have sent in.

Actually, an announcement first.

We're starting to putting some clips of this podcast on YouTube.

So if you're into multimedia, we'll link to that in the description.

But in other, any other business, this is in reference to episode 097, number of maps and numbered pads.

We heard from T,

or just the legend T,

who said, the Australian Emergency Services phone number, 000, introduced in 1961, was chosen for several reasons.

One of which was that because zero was nearest the finger stall.

The finger stall.

You talked about the finger stop.

A little thing, yeah.

Yeah.

And thus easier to dial in the dark or in heavy smoke.

Whoa.

So my issue was that it took too long.

Like, why would you make it?

All the way around.

But it's because if if you're reaching for the phone, you're making sure you are dialing the right number each time.

You can tell you don't have to count around the holes to work out which one you're dialing if you can't see it.

Feel around.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

This is the first one.

Yeah.

Grab it and go.

We got a message from Justin who

has a comment on the phone versus calculator layout.

Wants to add in different countries use different layouts for ATMs, so cash machine number pads.

They say hypothetically, it's important to know, should you be an Australian visiting Hong Kong, and on the first day of your visit, you're trying to work out why your normal pin doesn't work, and then your card gets eaten by the machine.

That sounds very specific.

Very specific.

So, hypothetically,

don't just use muscle memory.

Yep.

The numbers may be in different places on different ATMs in different countries.

Good advice, Justin.

And we heard from Fakruden.

I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly.

They responded to episode 098, Something Blue and Diamond Birthdays 2, saying something old, bring a bottle of water or nothing at all.

Almost all hydrogen in the universe, 11% of water, 8 to 10% of the human body, was formed during nucleosynthesis, very close to the start of the universe, and in a way, the oldest thing in the universe.

Wow.

Hydrogen, which is just a fancy name for a proton, I guess with an electron, fine, is the oldest thing.

So I guess it was the first thing in terms of matter in the universe.

Well played.

I agree.

Well, they say that water is the building block of life, don't they?

People might have said that.

I think I've heard that.

That's what big water says.

Yeah, they're just trying to get to us.

Something blue.

Liquid oxygen's very faintly blue.

Good solution.

Thank you so much to listening to episode 100 of A Problem Squared.

We appreciate each and every single one of you.

Doesn't matter if you've listened to one or a hundred episodes.

We value your listenership.

We also very much value our Patreon supporters.

To celebrate, sign up for $100

at patreon.com slash a problem squared.

Or less.

Or less or more.

And every episode, we pick three names

completely at random to thank by mispronouncing them.

Which this episode includes

I am

Rob

Ertz

Mad Eye

Son Joyce Sonj Son Sonjo

Sonjo Weiss

St.

Yves Cha

Le Wood.

Les Wood.

Le Wood.

That's what they call it in France.

So I've been Matt Parker.

You've also heard Beck Hill and our producer Lauren Armstrong Carter is a bit like the number 100 because

she's achieved a lot.

I was going to say it's really big.

That's not how that works.

She's a big achievement.

She's a big, yeah.

No, she's a bit like the 100 emoji.

Exciting

and a cause for celebration.

We approve.

We approve.

Oh.

Well,

I guess we're just gonna have to pack up the podcast now.

100 and done.

Oh, imagine if I just won battleships.

Oh, if you close battleships now, because we're not playing, is it?

Because sometimes you can play it where if someone hits, they get another guess, don't they?

Oh, really?

I feel like that

would speed through it too quickly.

Now, all of my pieces have fallen out again since the last game.

Yeah, likewise.

At least now we have.

Did you do I one last time?

You did.

Oh, you did I three.

You think I didn't hear that but you've just oh yeah yeah that was a misstep

that was a heck of a misstep

did i though did i

listener he did also meanwhile i've been putting in

your hits onto my ground so

that counts by the way no idea where anything's supposed to be right

okay

do you want to go first this time no no we have a system now it could have been a double bluff

but you did ask, you did say that.

I did, I did, yes.

Did you go for I want?

So I'm going to go for I want.

Aha, you fell for my triple bluff hit.

Short for I won.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

That was just fate,

F8.

Oh, nice.

Thank you.

Eight.

Miss.

Ah, nuts.

I found the India ship.

Or I've hit two parallel ships.

Until next time, until next time.

Bye-bye.