122 = Shocking Theories with Quickfire Queries

Speaker 1 Hey, Pre-Show Matt here to remind you: you've got until the end of November to sign up on Patreon for either the digital or physical Problem Squared Christmas card.

Speaker 1 End of November, and we'll send you a card.

Speaker 1 Hello, and welcome to A Problem Squared, the problem-solving podcast, which is a lot like jazz.

Speaker 1 We don't always make sense, but telling people you listen to us will make you appear more intellectual and cultured. That's true.
I'm Beck Hill, a comedian, writer, and the ass in brass section.

Speaker 1 And I'm joined by my co-host, who you can hear occasionally punctuating just words of agreement.

Speaker 1 Matt Parker, a comedian, mathematician, and the double ass in double bass. Hey.

Speaker 1 Look, before we go into the on this episode menu, I just have to address something.

Speaker 1 Just before I started introducing this episode,

Speaker 1 you said, hang on, I just have to get changed. I did, I said that.
You were in your normal sort of jeans t-shirt, looking classic Matt Civvies. You returned in a crisp white business shirt

Speaker 1 done all the way up. Yeah.
All the way up. So wearing a tie.
And a red silky tie. Your socks.
Turquoise socks. Turquoise socks.
And then are they the same jeans? They're the same jeans.

Speaker 1 Yeah, they're the same. They're the same jeans.
When Matt walked back in, I

Speaker 1 said that he looks like a teacher, which I know you used to do, Matt. Yeah.
But it's making you feel like that. I'm dressed like a math teacher.
Yeah, I don't like it. I'm not.

Speaker 1 I keep saying Beck, this is your time you're wasting. I know.
I'm not okay with this. You're visibly not okay with this.
Okay, let's do the little in this episode bit and we'll talk more about it.

Speaker 1 We'll deal with this. Yeah.

Speaker 1 On this episode. I mean, it's going to be a quickfire episode.

Speaker 1 It is yeah we're gonna do everything we're gonna see how many problems we can solve in one episode yep and we'll do a roundup of everyone who did calculations based on morgan's card game

Speaker 1 and i've dressed up and matt has dressed up you look like a politician

Speaker 1 hello matt hi

Speaker 1 I've never said that before, but your outfit is making me look. It's more formal.
It's so formal. I don't like what it's bringing out of me.
Okay, I'm dressed like a maths teacher. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Because

Speaker 1 I did a project, a video.

Speaker 1 I found someone on Reddit who basically asked the math subreddit how many items of clothing you'd need to own so that you could wear a different outfit every day for a year.

Speaker 1 Okay, now this I like. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
This is my jam. So, I mean, how many items of clothing would you need to have a different outfit every day? of the year? Right.

Speaker 1 So, this is going to be one of those exclamation point.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yes, yes, yes. Exactly.
It's that category, combinatorics.

Speaker 1 It won't be exclamation point unless you've got things that you can wear in multiple locations, like socks for gloves, that kind of thing. You know, normal stuff.
Right, again.

Speaker 1 Yeah, because we're not measuring in what order you put the

Speaker 1 matter where you put them on, with a few minor exceptions.

Speaker 1 It's what outfit you end up with if it's different. It is that same category of type of calculation.
Because you could do like

Speaker 1 all of the clothes you're currently wearing, but minus one sock is a different outfit

Speaker 1 and so on. Yep.
Are we counting no clothes as an outfit? Is that a birthday suit? So I am technically right now wearing the null hat.

Speaker 1 That's an important part of my outfit. Okay.

Speaker 1 Hang on a second. Could this just be a pair of underpants? And that's all you need because in

Speaker 1 each day you're not wearing something else. Correct, correct.

Speaker 1 It depends. Now, not all clothing of category could you have a null version.
It would depend how adventurous you are, I guess.

Speaker 1 Like, for example, my first thought when I saw the problem was, oh, if I was teaching, what I would have done, and I'm kicking myself, I didn't think of this when I was a teacher, is just buy 31 different ties, then number them, one for each day of the month, and then 12 different shirts.

Speaker 1 Yeah. And you're done.
It's a different outfit. Now, you got to wash the shirts.

Speaker 1 You might need duplicates, but you'd wear generally people have to wash their shirts anyway. It's a common problem anyway.

Speaker 1 But you'd wear the same shirt for a whole month and rotate through all 31 ties or up to 31 as required. Then the different shirt for the next month or 31 ties.
Yeah. And so you can go the whole year.

Speaker 1 But that's going to be 31 ties and 12 shirts is 43 items of clothing. Yeah.
And you can actually do it with far fewer. Yeah.
The fewest, if you don't accept null clothing, is 17.

Speaker 1 Oh.

Speaker 1 But you need to have lots lots of different categories. I ended up buying 18 items of clothing to get a year's worth of outfits.
So I bought five shirts,

Speaker 1 five ties,

Speaker 1 five different pairs of socks,

Speaker 1 and three hats, including the null hat. No underpants.
They don't have to vary. Hang on.
Wait a minute. You're going to go the whole year wearing one.
Oh, you're going to do it.

Speaker 1 I don't think changing underpants doesn't change your outfit. Okay.
From, you know, a user experience point of view. Okay, sure.

Speaker 1 So I didn't, the reason I didn't do different trousers is just trousers are expensive. I was like, what's the smallest amount of money I can spend to buy

Speaker 1 all these outfits? And between those, because five times five times five times three is 375,

Speaker 1 you've now got enough items of clothing to go a whole year. So I did a whole video about that.
It's the sum of the prime factors of numbers. And are you fully clothed? Yes.
Yeah. Throughout.

Speaker 1 I then thought, well, I can't do a video without wearing all 375 outfits. Yeah.
Could I be wearing any more outfits?

Speaker 1 Exactly. Well, I wore them one at a time.

Speaker 1 So I then did it like almost like a stop motion. I'm wearing each outfit for one-fifth of a second.
Yep. And we hired a studio and I did the whole 375

Speaker 1 outfits. Took a very long time.
Okay. Two days of filming to get all outfits.
What? Yeah.

Speaker 1 I mean, it just takes time. You got to put on, do the next thing, take it off, put it on.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 But when I was reviewing the footage afterwards i realized your tag was hanging out you stood all over

Speaker 1 facing the wrong way

Speaker 1 inside out we we missed one oh right in the middle we missed one oh which is what i'm wearing right now okay

Speaker 1 oh good i'm glad you decided to wear it on the audio media i know i know i just needed to i needed a way to make up for the fact

Speaker 1 that i missed one of 375. have you done the full video yet? This podcast will come out just after the video goes out.

Speaker 1 So we're going to get a photo of you in this outfit so that you can say, I did wear the missing outfit.

Speaker 1 So anyway, that's what I've been up to. I wore 374,

Speaker 1 now 375 outfits. To make a mathematical point.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Have you been back? I've been good. I went and saw Too Many Zoos Z-O-O-Z at the London Jazz Cafe

Speaker 1 recently, and it was fantastic. They are a jazz,

Speaker 1 like they call themselves Brass House.

Speaker 1 Which is very fun. It's sort of like a real fusion of, it's not, there's no lyrics.
It's sort of like a hip-hop.

Speaker 1 There's a bit of gypsy jazz in there. Latin American stuff.
Anyway, they're very cool. They're a trio that used to do a lot of busking on the New York Underground

Speaker 1 Metro, I believe it's called. They've been pretty big touring.
But it's my first time at the London Jazz Cafe. It's just down the road from where I live.
Really?

Speaker 1 Yeah, on Parkway in Camden. You've been more often than me, no? Yeah.
Oh, so this is the best thing.

Speaker 1 So the tickets were advertised earlier this year, and I thought, oh, that's not too far from my birthday. Oh, I'm going to book myself a pair of tickets

Speaker 1 for Future Beck. And the tickets were like £50 each.
And I was like, okay, you know, it's the jazz cafe. It's meant to be nice.
And then when I saw it, it was a table seating.

Speaker 1 And then £20 of the £50 goes towards your food. Oh, well, well, that's a good deal then.
Like that's what I also bought Future Beck a meal. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And so I bought them and then like a week later got advertised the standing tickets for 16 pounds. So I was like, oh, yeah, nuts.
But I tell you what, I'm so glad that I didn't realize.

Speaker 1 Oh, it was so nice. It was such a treat.
Yep. Yeah.
I had a really nice time. Oh, lovely.
Took my friend Nat. She and I had a lovely evening, feeling very cultured.
While sitting down.

Speaker 1 While sitting down. At a discount meal.
And normally, if I'm standing, I want to have a dance, right? Have you ever tried dancing to jazz? It is hard. Nothing changes.

Speaker 1 You don't know what's coming next. You really don't.
And so I was like, this was the right choice.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 that's what I've been up to. Right.

Speaker 1 Not as exciting as wearing the same shirt.

Speaker 1 Five different shirts. Yes, wearing five different shirts.
Now, before we get on with the rest of the episode, do you mind if I get changed back into my regular clip? Please. I'm going to go do that.

Speaker 1 Okay, so for any new listeners, we normally tackle one problem each. Yeah.

Speaker 1 For a total of two. That's right.
Every now and then, we get sent a problem where we think this might actually be quite quick to answer. We just never get around to it.
No.

Speaker 1 Or it's a problem we want to acknowledge and have a theory, but not really a whole solution. Yeah.
So we've been collecting some of these and we're going to see how many we can get through

Speaker 1 before we run out of time. Before we run out of time.
So

Speaker 1 Matt, take us away. So the first problem sent in by Gamatron, who went to the problem posing page at a problemsquared.com and merely typed in, is it possible to cook a chicken using a defibrillator?

Speaker 1 Peck? I looked into it. The answer is no.
How?

Speaker 1 Basically, to cook something, it needs to have a constant source of heat. Right.

Speaker 1 Otherwise, you're sort of just reheating the same bit again and again.

Speaker 1 Also, with electricity, it follows the path of least resistance, which means you're most likely going to really cook the bits where the defibrillator touches and it passes through, but it's not going to go, you're going to end up with a raw inside.

Speaker 1 Right. It's not going to go through the center of the first chicken

Speaker 1 got less resistance than raw chicken.

Speaker 1 I'll be honest, I didn't quite look into that. I feel like raw chicken would be more conductive.
That's true. So when the first path of least resistance cooks,

Speaker 1 it would then find an alternate path. It would be like a raw chicken-seeking path.
Yes. Now, a defibrillator can

Speaker 1 when you consider the fact that this is something that is used to restart a human heart and does not cook a human's flesh, it's not the same voltage as, say, like a lightning strike. No.

Speaker 1 So it's not really a high enough. But if you were running it constantly.
No, well, that's not how defibrillators work. You've got to charge them.
Otherwise, you're just sending an electric current.

Speaker 1 So you're thinking it's got to charge up the capacitors, then

Speaker 1 you might as well just say, Can you cook a chicken running?

Speaker 1 I'm like 98% sure I've seen like a video which was, Can you cook a chicken by slapping it?

Speaker 1 We don't want to know about your algorithm.

Speaker 1 Having to ruin my algorithm, I'm about to type this in. Okay, can you

Speaker 1 cook a chicken? last chance to stop by

Speaker 1 here it comes slap it auto field slapping it well they made a chicken slapping device okay

Speaker 1 and how quickly did it have to slap it okay

Speaker 1 it was uh a youtube channel i don't know this channel

Speaker 1 sorry that's the sound of someone slapping a chicken i do apologize you all had to hear that

Speaker 1 i gotta say that producer laura and i cannot see matt's screen so So as far as we know, that's the sound of slapping a chicken.

Speaker 1 So this is

Speaker 1 a YouTuber,

Speaker 1 Louis or Louis

Speaker 1 Wise.

Speaker 1 Sorry, I've mispronounced that. Looks like a very good YouTuber by all accounts here.
And

Speaker 1 they cooked chicken by making a chicken slapper. But the point is...

Speaker 1 Right?

Speaker 1 Something like

Speaker 1 a slap or a defibrillator.

Speaker 1 Very different things. Very different things.
It's putting energy into something.

Speaker 1 And if you can put it in faster than it can get out, you'll gradually raise the temperature. Yes.
However, even a defibrillator isn't doing it enough. Okay.

Speaker 1 Also, if you can't keep the heat consistent and building. Yes.
Yeah. Yeah, there's your problem.

Speaker 1 Because raw chicken, as we know, the longer it's left out, the more time the bacteria can multiply. So you're not really allowing time to kill off the bacteria.
So

Speaker 1 short answer, no. No, great.
Thankfully, we don't. That said, I did have a friend tell me that you can get defibrillators at a pretty low cost.
Oh.

Speaker 1 And maybe at some point I'll need to test this.

Speaker 1 Okay, so that's one for further research.

Speaker 1 I mean,

Speaker 1 let's go with a tentative ding. Okay, let's go with a ding for no.
But if anyone could prove me wrong. Wrong.
Right.

Speaker 1 Our next problem is from Doss,

Speaker 1 who says, if my cats are all named with the starting letter Y,

Speaker 1 and I expect to get more in the future, what would be the best name for future cats?

Speaker 1 My current cats are Yasha, YOLO, and Yeti. Blah, blah, blah.
Love the show. So these want more cat names that start with Y.
Yep. That's the problem that they've posed to us.

Speaker 1 You can see why we save this for for a quick fire.

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 1 I think

Speaker 1 yoga.

Speaker 1 Yoga is a good name. Yogi.
Yogurt. Oh, yogurt or yogurt the cat.
Yogurt the cat. Yogurt's a good name for a cat.
Yeah, that would be a good name. I would name the next cat yo.

Speaker 1 Uh-huh. The following cat, yo-yo.

Speaker 1 And then the following cat, yo-yo-yo. Oh, I go, yo,

Speaker 1 yo-yo,

Speaker 1 yogurt. Yo-oh, yo-yogurt.
Yo-yogurt. Yogurt, yo.

Speaker 1 Yogurt, yogurt.

Speaker 1 Yo-gurgurt.

Speaker 1 Goat, yogurt. No, that sounds a G.

Speaker 1 Why? I think yacht. Yot.

Speaker 1 Because no one knows how to spell it.

Speaker 1 I think you should start doing people names, but just change the. So Yonathan.

Speaker 1 Oh, I see what you're doing.

Speaker 1 Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yak and Yil.

Speaker 1 Yep.

Speaker 1 You see?

Speaker 1 Great suggestion, yak. Yeah.
All right, yacht.

Speaker 1 Yebastian.

Speaker 1 Ding.

Speaker 1 Ying.

Speaker 1 Ying.

Speaker 1 Ying and yang. Ying and yang.

Speaker 1 They're legitimate suggestions. Doss, I hope that helps.
Yep. I tell you what, if you get through all of those suggestions and then you need more, come back.
Come back. Yeah.

Speaker 1 on a similar theme Wolfie wrote in

Speaker 1 I wouldn't call this a complaint

Speaker 1 but they say

Speaker 1 that our practice of mispronouncing names is highly entertaining they also find it somewhat irritating Now they're referring to it when we thank our Patreon supporters at the end of the podcast and we pick three names at random to mispronounce.

Speaker 1 Why did we do that? Why did we did

Speaker 1 Because we weren't sure if we were saying the names right. Because a lot of them were hard to pronounce anyway.
So we decided that to be fair. To be fair, everyone gets their name mispronounced.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 1 And I dare say it's become a feature. I think people like we're offering them a free

Speaker 1 alternate pronunciation of their name

Speaker 1 on us.

Speaker 1 So Wolfie is finding that entertaining but irritating. Their question is: are there names that are unmispronounceable?

Speaker 1 Maybe they're wondering about signing up to support us on Patreon at patreon.com/slash a problem squared. Well, we said wolfie, but it's spelt w-o-l-f-i, so it could be volfi.

Speaker 1 Volfi, that's a good point. This is why we do it.

Speaker 1 I don't think there are. I think you can mispronounce anything if you put your mind to it

Speaker 1 as we've discovered. Yeah, you make your name the letter A, I'm gonna say

Speaker 1 O.

Speaker 1 That's just saying a different word.

Speaker 1 So mispronouncing has to use the letters. So you'll say if the name is pronounced ah, then you would say A.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 Wolfie or Volfi

Speaker 1 said that they like pitching this as a problem because we like to ridicule people's names. Now, I would say we don't ridicule them.
No, this number one, done with love. Yes.

Speaker 1 But for me, Trying to mispronounce every name, that is the conundrum that we're trying to solve. Well, how to mispronounce every name? Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 I mean, a lot of the time we just move the spaces. Yes.
That I'm a big fan of. That's what I'm like.
Or add spaces. Add spaces.
No one said we couldn't add pauses. We do add pauses.
Yeah. Liberally.

Speaker 1 That's how you get T-I'm out of Tim. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Or

Speaker 1 M-At.

Speaker 1 Yeah, B-Ek.

Speaker 1 C-E? C?

Speaker 1 I don't think you could bulletproof a name so it's not mispronounceable.

Speaker 1 But hey, if we've accidentally pronounced your name correctly, yeah, how would they prove though that we pronounce their name? I mean, I mainly said it as a joke.

Speaker 1 You know,

Speaker 1 we don't joke on this podcast, we yoke, we yoke. That's another name for Doss's cast.
There we go,

Speaker 1 and we've come full circle. Uh, so in conclusion, no,

Speaker 1 dinge.

Speaker 1 We also heard from Canvural.

Speaker 1 Don't know if I'm mispronouncing that or not, but I like it. I'm happy with that.
What is the most efficient way to cool down a meal once it is already in your mouth?

Speaker 1 My favourite thing about this as an opening sentence is cool down a meal. A whole meal.

Speaker 1 Either they eat very small meals

Speaker 1 or.

Speaker 1 It's always a struggle for me because I do not check before if the food is very hot or very nice. I feel like we could solve this problem upstream.

Speaker 1 So then I i have to do weird breathing to cool it down in my mouth before chewing or roll it around in my mouth yep i think we could all yep yep relate to that is there a scientifically proven most efficient way to do it and as a bonus what would be the silliest funniest way ah now scientifically proven no it would be just to drink water

Speaker 1 while the food is in your mouth

Speaker 1 you reckon that'd be quicker than going

Speaker 1 Yeah, 100%. Yeah, probably.
Because the water. That's why they don't tell you to blow out fire.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 If your your house is on fire, blow. The fire brigade.
Yeah, don't show up with them.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, there's a reason

Speaker 1 that they show up with straws. Yeah, no, it's just straws.

Speaker 1 The fire engine shows up with just a massive air tank on it with a fan.

Speaker 1 Now, fire is, of course, subtly different because you're providing oxygen. Yes.
Yeah, yeah. But in terms of heat transfer,

Speaker 1 like water is going to be way better at heat transfer. It can take more energy before it heats up.
So there's a difference between heat and temperature.

Speaker 1 And different substances have a different ratio, let's say, between the two.

Speaker 1 Because if you were to put

Speaker 1 different objects in the oven and got them all to the same temperature, and one of them was like a solid chunk of metal and one was a chunk of wood,

Speaker 1 you could pick the bit of wood up and you're like, oh, fine. Because it's going to let go of the heat more quickly.
But also, at that temperature, it hasn't absorbed that much heat.

Speaker 1 Its specific heat is quite low. So it's self-insulated.
It's more fundamental than that. It's just it takes less energy for it to reach a certain temperature.
Okay.

Speaker 1 Whereas things like water take a lot of energy to change their temperature. That's why you have a hot water bottle, but you don't have a hot water balloon.

Speaker 1 You do get a hot air balloon. A hot air balloon, but not

Speaker 1 a hot air water balloon. Yeah, that's well, you're right.
That's more of a container issue.

Speaker 1 A hot water air balloon. No, that's not what I'm doing here.
Well, a hot air balloon, you have to keep heating the air. Can I have a second pass?

Speaker 1 Yeah, a hot air balloon, if you took that to bed, would not keep you warm for very long. No.

Speaker 1 Because it doesn't take much heat to warm up air.

Speaker 1 It would flow to the ceiling.

Speaker 1 Oh, let's do a quick fire episode. That'll be easier.

Speaker 1 So, what I'm trying to say is, water has a very high specific heat, which is why we use it to store heat. Yes.
Radiators, et cetera.

Speaker 1 So, if you were to drink water, as opposed to just inhaling air through the weird, hot food breathing thing,

Speaker 1 the water can absorb way more heat out of your food fast. And in terms of transferring heat, you've got a way better conductive transfer when you put it in liquid because it's just way more contact.

Speaker 1 Okay, so my what I tend to do when food is too hot,

Speaker 1 and this is probably why people don't invite me out for fancy dinners. Oh, I know, you like spit it directly up in the air, and then catch it, and then catch it again,

Speaker 1 and then it's cool down

Speaker 1 during the fight. Yeah, I know.
I've seen you in a fancy restaurant

Speaker 1 because you're classic like that. Because I'm classy.

Speaker 1 No, I'm way more classy in that when something's too hot, I just go,

Speaker 1 just

Speaker 1 like the amount of times

Speaker 1 I've eaten and just gone,

Speaker 1 just let it fall out of my mouth. But what do you think is faster?

Speaker 1 Going

Speaker 1 and letting it fall out of my mouth. Or let's say I had

Speaker 1 in my hand. Oh, that's tough.
Where the water is going to take the temperature out of your tongue and everything else as well. So it will also solve any burns

Speaker 1 that are in progress. So the answer for scientific and silliest is to always have a glass of cold water.
Ready to go. Ready to go in your hand.
It could be ambient temperature. Sure.

Speaker 1 As long as it's not boiling.

Speaker 1 As long as it is cooler than the food. Yes, yes.

Speaker 1 So, those are your options. Yep.

Speaker 1 But you could try spitting it up in the air. You could try launching it directly vertically.

Speaker 1 But I do find it less energy just to let it fall out.

Speaker 1 Funniest when it's soup.

Speaker 1 We have a problem sent in from Thad.

Speaker 1 Yep. Thad wants to know, in the word scent, as in S-C-E-N-T.
Meaning aroma. Is the S silent or is the C?

Speaker 1 I love this.

Speaker 1 Scent.

Speaker 1 Scent.

Speaker 1 Is it closer to I sent this problem in?

Speaker 1 This solution is my two scents.

Speaker 1 I'm going to say they're both silent.

Speaker 1 Oh.

Speaker 1 And there's a hidden difference in K.

Speaker 1 Yeah, but the K is pronounced.

Speaker 1 I think the answer to this is yes. Yes.

Speaker 1 Okay, producer Laura claims she's found the actual answer.

Speaker 2 I have actually found the answer to whether the S or the C is silent.

Speaker 1 Did you do like a non-zero amount of research?

Speaker 2 Well, what I did was I didn't even type it, I copied the question into Google.

Speaker 1 We couldn't even be bothered copying it back. Laura, Laura, don't tell the listeners how they're doing.
To be fair, Thad couldn't be bothered doing that either.

Speaker 1 Let's have it. I love that

Speaker 1 it makes more sense

Speaker 1 for our listeners to go to problemsquared.com,

Speaker 1 add in all of their details and send in a problem and then wait

Speaker 1 for a twockly

Speaker 1 show

Speaker 1 to see if we'll cover their problem rather than pop it into Google. And I thank you for that because this is necessary for my well-being.
Laura, what did you think?

Speaker 2 Technically, neither of them are silent. They work together to make a digraph, which is when two letters combine to make one sound, like a pH, making a sound.

Speaker 1 And the s is so the s is a special thing. Is its own special thing?

Speaker 2 The C is its own special thing.

Speaker 1 So they are both necessary. Wow.

Speaker 2 Even though they're not necessary in sent or sent, but they are in sent.

Speaker 1 Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1 That is like us.

Speaker 1 So the question was, in the word scent, is the S island or is the C? The answer is no.

Speaker 1 We also heard from Dr. Sophie the dentist.

Speaker 1 Yeah, hang on. Dr.
Sophie's meant to solve problems, not

Speaker 1 Dr. Sophie has earned a freebie.
That's a valid point.

Speaker 1 So she says, we're planning on growing our family in the next few years, which will mean James, that's her partner, James's beloved study will need to become a bedroom. Oh, yep.

Speaker 1 Our plan is to renovate our garage into a gaming room for him. So now we need a Boffice and Blounge style name for it.
We'd love your help. The gaming garage.

Speaker 1 Yes. Yeah.

Speaker 1 I would float

Speaker 1 Dinage.

Speaker 1 Oh, like a den. Yeah, like a den, but fancy sounding.
Can I welcome you to the Dinage? Where's James? He's in the Dinage. Yeah, that's nice.
James's surname is actually Devalve.

Speaker 1 So Devalve's Dinage is really fancy. Like, that is.

Speaker 1 I want to get that on a match, like matchbooks, like in a speakeasy. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah. I like Dinage.
That's really classy. Classy.
Smoke-filled, but not in a bad for your health way.

Speaker 1 No, in like from incense or something.

Speaker 1 I'm trying to think if I've got a better one than Dinage, but I think that's my favorite. Garage, gaming.
Yeah, you're distracted by the G's and the A's at the top there. I am.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 I mean, if it's a games room for James, surely a James James room. A James room.
Yeah. For Jaming.
For his Jaming. Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 I mean, James room is fun for Jaming, but I think Dinage nailed it. I feel like it's in the spirit of the blounge, the Boffis.

Speaker 1 Yeah. The Dinage.
A Dinage.

Speaker 1 Yeah. It's sophisticated.
I like it. Dinage includes Den as in dentist.

Speaker 1 It's all coming together, guys. Perfect.
Dr. Sophie, let us know if that's a dang dang.

Speaker 1 In a similar naming of a space theme, Ken Floor wrote in to say, how long can the new studio,

Speaker 1 the new Deo,

Speaker 1 and they've spelt it both ways to be safe. For the record, the new studio is spelt N-E-W-D-I-O.
Yes, this is where we're recording currently. We're recording in the Nudio.

Speaker 1 Now,

Speaker 1 for the ring I'm going on the record, I've been trying to stop using the name Nudio.

Speaker 1 And I'm not having any of it. You're not having any of it.
And we haven't come up with a better name, so we're kind of stuck for now.

Speaker 1 Ken Floor wants to know how long can it stay new?

Speaker 1 A day? A week? A month? Maybe next year?

Speaker 1 Does it have to be superseded by New Studio 2 Electric New Deal? Good work.

Speaker 1 Oh, good work. Good work, Ken Floor.

Speaker 1 Best wishes, warmest things.

Speaker 1 Blah, blah, blah. Okay, what on, what on, okay, great.

Speaker 1 Well, I do like the idea of having to number them because then eventually you get to Nudio 54. Yeah, that would be very funny.
Yeah, okay.

Speaker 1 I did, I do want to add as well that my mate Robert Wells, lovely fella, shout out if you're listening, Robert, had also sent me a voice note recently to say, just so you know, every time you say Nudio, I think it's somewhere you're recording in the news

Speaker 1 and then yep yep yep i wrote back it's not my first nude

Speaker 1 n-u-d-e-o

Speaker 1 well done

Speaker 1 uh now i would like a new name for the nudeo

Speaker 1 you said that but we were chatting with comedian dominic roberts earlier who we had lunch with and mentioned this problem i did and he pointed out that

Speaker 1 New York

Speaker 1 is still called New York. I do like the idea that eventually Newcastle upon Tyne River or even Newcastle in Australia.
Yeah, it's not become castle. No

Speaker 1 New South Wales never became South Wales.

Speaker 1 You could do a New New York,

Speaker 1 but

Speaker 1 then would you have New York and then current New York becomes York and then York becomes old York Britain becomes Old York.

Speaker 1 Look, I just feel like York, that's another name for a cat.

Speaker 1 Correct.

Speaker 1 York and then in brackets, new. Yeah.
Comma, new. Yeah.
I don't know. I feel like there's a more clever name

Speaker 1 than Nudeo.

Speaker 1 And I feel like for the longest time, Nudeo was being used in future tense and during the setup phase. At some point, it's just going to be a studio.
No,

Speaker 1 not if I can help it.

Speaker 1 You can try, Matt, but it's not happening.

Speaker 1 And I can tell you the more that you insist that we should not call this the Nudio, please send in our listeners will be calling really good suggestions for my studio. Dinage.

Speaker 1 The Dinage.

Speaker 1 I prefer Dinage. Dr.
Sophie, if you take Nudio. No,

Speaker 1 I'm not, it's not like the ring.

Speaker 1 Ah, fine.

Speaker 1 Electric Nudio.

Speaker 1 Yeah, there you go. We'll call it that.
The electric Nudeo. Fine.
Well, apparently that problem remains. I'm sorry.
It still remains open.

Speaker 1 How long does it stay new? Ken for you. We'll find out.
Stay tuned.

Speaker 1 We heard from Cam,

Speaker 1 who says,

Speaker 1 hi, Bec and Matt. First off, I love the podcast, blah, blah, blah.
Then they've written. Oh, how can you be so dismissive, our listeners? Yeah, that's what they've written.

Speaker 1 Then they've written, no, he's just doing the repetitive joke of writing blah, blah, blah, in the problem.

Speaker 1 Hey, were you going to skip over the context, too? Which they've also

Speaker 1 just scripted the entire opening. Cam, well done.
Thanks. Cam says, I just got married a few days ago.

Speaker 1 Congrats, Cam. Oh, I'm glad that.
Congratulations. It was such a lovely time.
You're already

Speaker 1 writing a show.

Speaker 1 Questions on the internet or podcast. And was listening to the episodes where you discussed the meaning of marriage in the week before the big day, which was incredibly helpful.
Phew.

Speaker 1 Thank you for your wise words. Fortunately, we had many people who we love come celebrate with us, and we want to thank all of them for coming and indulging in my need to be the centre of attention.

Speaker 1 Unfortunately, I'm not creative enough to come up with unique ways of thanking them all, and the idea of a generic platitude gives me the ick.

Speaker 1 How could we thank all of our guests, including some who are already in another hemisphere, without repeating expressions of gratitude? With love from your distant and girt homeland, Cam.

Speaker 1 Pleased, Cam. Individually mispronounce their names.

Speaker 1 It's the number one way to show gratitude.

Speaker 1 Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1 Pick three of them at random.

Speaker 1 There, now you're talking.

Speaker 1 And then give the rest of them a podcast.

Speaker 1 Have a good one. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Hey, yeah,

Speaker 1 I would argue it's all right. And you have.

Speaker 1 Well, firstly, I do want to say, now, Cab, you've been very kind and very sweet. You said you're not creative to come up with unique ways of thanking them all.

Speaker 1 Firstly, you're creative enough to have fully scripted what we would have seen. Yeah, the first two lines of that.

Speaker 1 I would argue it's not that you're not creative enough, but that you do not have time. Because that is the reason why most people send out a like generic thank you card.

Speaker 1 When I got married, we did like a postcard with some photos from the wedding on the front and then like a pre-printed like, thanks for coming. Yeah.
Blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah.

Speaker 1 Which we sent to everyone. And the reason you do that is because you've got however many people attended and to write individual thank you cards, you know, like, sure.

Speaker 1 Each of those people put aside a bit of time and an effort to come along, but got they got a party out of it.

Speaker 1 They might have got a meal out of it, whatever. Probably a few food, maybe free drinks.
Yeah. So in a sense, the main thing they're doing is being there.

Speaker 1 But that's not a huge amount of work when you boil it down to you take off like what they got out of it. Oh, okay.
You're trying to say the net effort. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Whereas to write, you've already done the invites, you've done all the organizing, you've done all of this, and then to have to do one last final bit of admin.

Speaker 1 So you're just trying to take the pressure off Cam.

Speaker 1 I'm just trying to say, I because I think it'd be very easy to say it's not that you're not creative enough, you're just lazy, but I it's not a laziness thing, it's so much effort.

Speaker 1 But I think Cam wants to put that effort in, I think they want like some kind of act of gratitude. I think nothing would say thank you, like letters where you've cut all the letters out of magazines

Speaker 1 like a ransom letter

Speaker 1 and glued them into a thank you card. So, it's the same platitude, but spelt like with different.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, gosh, that's.

Speaker 1 Or maybe just their name. Whether it's got like a generic thank you message in the card, but you cut their name from letters out of magazines.
Yes, you could do that.

Speaker 1 There's also, I mean, might I suggest doing something where you get a different result each time? Like maybe if you were to, let's say you invited 50 people to the wedding. So you get 50.

Speaker 1 Five ties, five shirts,

Speaker 1 two hats

Speaker 1 and you take a photo of you in a different outfit for every single person's card

Speaker 1 actually do you know what's quite fun do paper dolls do

Speaker 1 do a picture of you and your partner in like undergarments long johns whatever makes you feel comfortable right

Speaker 1 and then like paper dolls right and then you send just some little cutout things with no context with with clothes.

Speaker 1 And you just have thank you written on there. But every person you send it to can like dress you guys up however they want.

Speaker 1 Well, it's because you were talking about outfits.

Speaker 1 So you're going to make it creepier.

Speaker 1 Creepier than sending a photo of you in different clothes.

Speaker 1 I was going to say, let's say you invited 50 people.

Speaker 1 You get 50 pieces of A5 or maybe even A6 card,

Speaker 1 put them all next to each other, like in a sort of square shape or whatever. And then do a Jackson Pollock, right? You're in Australia.

Speaker 1 Just chuck a bunch of paint and stuff at them. So each card has its own unique design.

Speaker 1 Okay, yep. But part of a set.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 And so, and then you can number them. We're a big fan of individually numbering things.
Numbering. Done that with our flyers in the past.
Number them by hand.

Speaker 1 And then just, you know, appreciated you being there. Here is an original piece of art, 17 of 50.

Speaker 1 And but the thing is, is they're all individual, they're different, they're different, it's not like one of 12 of the same piece, no,

Speaker 1 it's they're all but they're part of a great, greater big. I think there's just something about brings everyone together.
It's you've put in some effort, it's different,

Speaker 1 it says thank you, but you know, they say a picture is worth a thousand words. Why say

Speaker 1 thank you

Speaker 1 in a thousand words differently when you could just do different images?

Speaker 1 You said it. Yeah.

Speaker 1 I think that's the best answer. Thank you.
I would do the lazier automated version of that. Yep.

Speaker 1 Because you know, I've done stuff with Python code where you can generate images and you can generate individual images, like use some kind of random seed or a Perlin noise background or something.

Speaker 1 I've done that before. Yeah, Matt says easier.
I remember having to stand there and

Speaker 1 film you on the Greenwich. Okay, yeah, yes.
The Prime Meridian. Prime Prime Middle.
Yeah, I definitely

Speaker 1 held an iPad which showed up a different Patreon name

Speaker 1 at a rate of however frames per second so that you could take all of those frames and turn them into individual pictures. And we were there for

Speaker 1 like two hours. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 You're still putting the effort in.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 I'd rather write out 50 thank you.

Speaker 1 You and I are very different people. Yeah, one of those things.
I think the cards that are in a set but are unique is a really nice touch. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Choose a nice piece of card, and then you can stick a stamp on the other side and send it off as a postcard. That's how you get it to the overseas friends.
Check out an envelope. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Well, you don't know how to do that. Just send us a postcard.
They can frame it. They can stick it on the fridge, do whatever they want with it, sell it.
I hope that helps.

Speaker 1 And finally, Osa.

Speaker 1 Has pointed out that we are a mere six episodes away from episode two to the power of seven.

Speaker 1 Two to the power of seven is 128.

Speaker 1 Why is that such a big deal? Nerds love powers of two.

Speaker 1 Sure. Partly because they're fun.
If you play the doubling game, I do like the doubling game. I knew that game game game.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I knew.

Speaker 1 And binary numbers. Binary numbers work in powers of two, basically.
So,

Speaker 1 what's so great about two to the power of seven? It's just, it's just power of two. Okay.
It's not a specific one. If anything, two to the power of eight is the famous one.
256.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's a nice one. I love 256.
But one, 128 is still very cool. Yes.
So we're coming up on episode 128,

Speaker 1 which in binary would be 1000000. Very cool, really.

Speaker 1 Okay, that is good. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And Oza has realized he has a big problem. Oh, my goodness.
I'm sorry, Oza. Oh, they have a big problem that the master episode might be the most appropriate for.

Speaker 1 Okay, here we go.

Speaker 1 So it turns out Oza has some questions here. They don't know how us fine folks came together to create a podcast, why we left Australia, and other questions as well.

Speaker 1 Things that are, and they, now, these are Oza's words, are run-of-the-mill fans might want to know about you folks and your work.

Speaker 1 So, Oza's problem is, would you be able to do an AMA episode, that's an ask me anything, or in this case, it'd be an ask must everything

Speaker 1 to solve everyone's curiosities. So, we put a call for questions out in advance, and then we do episode two to the seven.
Is us answering a whole bunch of them. I think we could do that, yeah.

Speaker 1 It'd be a bit like this one. Like, we don't often do these quickfire ones because they're a bit bitty, yeah.
And I know that a lot of our listeners come here because they want something they can

Speaker 1 exactly

Speaker 1 with chunks in it, yeah.

Speaker 1 But I did think for a moment, well, hang on, this whole show is basically a big ask me anything,

Speaker 1 yeah. But it's ask us things that can be contrived to be a problem, anything, yes, yeah.
So, yeah, yeah, I'm up for that.

Speaker 1 If anyone wants to ask specifically, Matt and I, any questions about ourselves or anything like that? So, if you have any questions for Matt and I, go to our problemsquared.com,

Speaker 1 choose problem

Speaker 1 in the dropdown, and make sure you include the letters AMA together. As one word.
As one word.

Speaker 1 Search for that string. We will be looking specifically.

Speaker 1 Yeah. So, AMA, make sure you mention that in there so that we can collate your questions.
And feel free to discuss AMA questions on Reddit, etc. We will cast our eye across those.

Speaker 1 Yes, for anyone like me who isn't entirely sure how far away our two to the power of seven episode is, producer Laura says it'll come out in February.

Speaker 1 In February, let's say you got till the end of 2025 to get him in. Cool.
And we look forward to being asked anything. Yeah.
So technically, ding. Ding.
will be ding. Future ding.
Future ding.

Speaker 1 And that concludes our rapid fire episode. If you liked it, let us know.
We're on a problem squared across the social medias.

Speaker 1 And now it's time for

Speaker 1 any other

Speaker 1 I forgot about the jazz theme. Good work.

Speaker 1 That's how I pronounce B in jazz.

Speaker 1 You pronounced it correctly, too. Thank you.
So for any other business, this is when we cover things

Speaker 1 coming from previous episodes. So exciting, any other business? A lot of people have run the numbers on Morgan's card game.
The game that their family played. Their mum never won.

Speaker 1 Their dad played once and won immediately. It's a solitaire type game where you work your way through a deck according to rules.
And you win if you eliminate all the cards by the end.

Speaker 1 But it's completely out of your control. Now, a few people did say

Speaker 1 that it cannot be

Speaker 1 one over the square root of two probability. This was what you found, which is what? Oh, well, I found the number looked weirdly close to that.

Speaker 1 Yeah, now I should say, for any new listeners, if you're sitting there going, What the heck are you talking about now? Go back to episode 120. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,

Speaker 1 and I simulated it in code and got a weirdly value very, very close to one over root two

Speaker 1 divided by a hundred technically.

Speaker 1 And that confused me because you very, you don't really see square root of two in probabilities. Like, that's just a very unusual place to see a root two.

Speaker 1 A few people raised, it can't be that because,

Speaker 1 as we said, it's a deterministic game where the setup of the deck determines the outcome. And there are a finite number of ways to arrange a deck.
Like, it's a very, very big number, but it's a number

Speaker 1 of which some end in zero and some don't. So the probability of ending in zero is some whole number divided by the whole number.
That's the number of ways to arrange deck of cards.

Speaker 1 And root two, famously, is not a rational number. It cannot be written as

Speaker 1 the ratio between two whole numbers. Right.
So in that regard...

Speaker 1 The exact probability can't be 1 over root 2 in this specific case because it has to be a rational number. I would say maybe for bigger and bigger decks, it approaches 1 over root 2.

Speaker 1 I think the value could be 1 over root 2, and we'll get a rational approximation of it as the probability for a finite deck.

Speaker 1 But that's all a moot point

Speaker 1 because,

Speaker 1 as a lot of people worked out, it's not 1 over root 2. It's just very, very close.

Speaker 1 So, Chris worked it out with some error bars. They're like, it's not

Speaker 1 0.707, which is around 1 over root 2. They've got it 0.706

Speaker 1 with a 0.16% deviation from root two, meaning that they're confident it's very close but not quite. And we had a lot of other people write in with the same thing.

Speaker 1 I'll name check a few people.

Speaker 1 Deed or DD

Speaker 1 simulated 10 billion runs of the game. Wow.
And they got 0.0070646.

Speaker 1 Josh wrote some very efficient code. They did 25 billion simulations in under 90 seconds.
Now,

Speaker 1 I hate to

Speaker 1 bring up

Speaker 1 old, old wounds.

Speaker 1 The people writing code more efficient than me. Very funny theme on this podcast.

Speaker 1 Thanks, Josh. Yeah, my simulation code was super slow.
I just rat, it was good enough to get. Hey, it's faster than me.

Speaker 1 I don't feel any better.

Speaker 1 Ow.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that was, we both got insulted.

Speaker 1 I mean, here's the thing: I wrote some lazy code to answer a question where to the nearest percent or tenth of a percent, maybe a hundredth of a percent is all we really needed.

Speaker 1 Whereas the precision to tell the difference between route two and this is like you know, one part in 100,000 or something, right? Give or take. Don't quote me on that.

Speaker 1 So I didn't optimize my code. Now,

Speaker 1 it should be said, I never optimized my code. So it's not like I would have.

Speaker 1 Just

Speaker 1 not what I do. Josh here, super efficient code, did the 25 billion in under 90 seconds, and they got 0.70638.

Speaker 1 And I then did run my code again a bunch, and it also started 7063.

Speaker 1 But it would round up to 4.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 it's not root 2. It's just incredibly close.
So thank you so much, everyone, who also ran the code as well and simulated this problem

Speaker 1 to show it's not 1 over root 2. And that's how maths,

Speaker 1 you know, investigations start. A lot of maths! Exactly, maths for you.
You start by,

Speaker 1 you know, just messing around with something. And then every now and then, something will catch your eye and you're like, that's odd.
That's interesting.

Speaker 1 And sometimes that leads to an interesting puzzle or discovery or pattern or whatever. And sometimes it doesn't.
In this case, it was a quinky dink.

Speaker 1 So anyway, thank you so much, everyone who ran it. And other people also came up with games where you never remove any cards.
So you get all 52 cards put down. So well done.

Speaker 1 Yes, we had fun. So did everyone else.
Appreciated you all coming in. Also, shout out to Chris and Didi, who Matt mentioned earlier, who have both posted their workings.

Speaker 1 They're showing their working out. Yes, yeah.
Chris did a blog post. Didi's popped it up on GitHub.
We've got the links in the show notes.

Speaker 1 And that's us for time.

Speaker 1 Because if we do any more, we will go off on tangents. Oh, my goodness.

Speaker 1 But if you enjoyed it, please let us know. In the meantime, we're going to thank everyone.
Who is listening? That's you, in case you weren't sure.

Speaker 1 And especially thank three of our Patreon supporters at random by mispronouncing their names. And on this episode, the three random Patreon supporters that we have chosen are C.
Ollen

Speaker 1 Janky.

Speaker 1 All Skiller, no Filler.

Speaker 1 Craig.

Speaker 1 Well, that is how that's how they pronounce it, isn't it? That's how they mispronounce it. True, yes.

Speaker 1 Thank you. We would say Craig.
I mean, Craig, it's your name. If you pronounce it Craig, that's valid.
If you pronounce it Craig, you're wrong.

Speaker 1 Craig should not rhyme with egg.

Speaker 1 A

Speaker 1 Enders on.

Speaker 1 I also want to thank my co-host. That's me.

Speaker 1 Matt Charlie Parker. Charlie Parker was a jazz musician.
Oh, nicely done. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And myself,

Speaker 1 Bake Hill, because I am a jazz musician. You are a jazz musician.
Yeah, well.

Speaker 1 And Laura, the Duke Grimshaw

Speaker 1 taking the lead.

Speaker 1 So now we're going to scat our ways out.

Speaker 1 Battleship.

Speaker 1 All right, Beck. All right, put me out of my misery.
Well, we don't know where this is going.

Speaker 1 You get to shoot first. Oh, goody.

Speaker 1 I mean, I'm definitely going to. If I don't hit, I don't know how that works.

Speaker 1 C2.

Speaker 1 You're not going to believe this.

Speaker 1 Hit.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 you sunk my battleship. I mean, that's pretty cool.
Well done. If only

Speaker 1 I didn't have a whole other battleship to go.

Speaker 1 I'm gonna guess A nine.

Speaker 1 A nine? A nine.

Speaker 1 Miss. Pardon us.

Speaker 1 Could have known you would have gone vertical.