A Problem Squared - 007 = Big Thing Fans and Retirement Plans

Episode Date: May 31, 2020

- What is the biggest big thing? - Is the lottery a good retirement plan? - Update on the £5,000 t-shirt. - The taster data has popped. Support us on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/aproblemsquared Review us on apple podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/a-problem-squared/id1490290676 Twitter: https://twitter.com/aproblemsquared Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/aproblemsquared/ This is the bear with very long legs. Very long. Legs. https://www.buzzfeed.com/bradesposito/people-are-losing-it-over-this-giant-teddy-bear-that-just Tallest Filing Cabinet on Earth https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/world-s-tallest-filing-cabinet The difference between Financial Advice and Financial Guidance. https://www.fca.org.uk/consumers/understanding-advice-guidance-investments Get your own free financial guidance from here: https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/debt-and-money/getting-financial-advice/ Bec's £5000 T-SHIRT http://www.bechillcomedian.com/shop Here's Mr Squiggle, he's lots of fun for everyone. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdmsE-Bff7k Check out our instagram for photos. https://www.instagram.com/aproblemsquared/

Welcome to A Problem Squared, a podcast where we solve problems that come at us from all different directions. My name is Matt Parker, mathematician and problem solver. And of course, I'm joined by my co-solver of co-problems it's beck hill hey you gotta be more confident in yourself matt you can't do a problem solving podcast and then be like oh well i like to be judged by the track record of our solutions not by my optimism i'm matt parker president um how are you doing? I am really well. I'm very excited. That was a new theme tune we just had. Yes, yes. Eagle-eared listeners may have noticed that we've mixed up the music. We've decided to get a proper theme commissioned. Yeah, I'm really happy with it

as well. So this is a courtesy of Howard Carter, who is the same composer who put together my Stand Up Maths theme song I use on YouTube and a spoken nerd theme and actually did the previous audio that we were using. We went to Howard and said, hey, can you put together something which is more problem-solvery? And that's what they gave us. And what a fine job they did too. In this episode i'm going to be talking about big things i'm going to be looking at if a lottery ticket is a good retirement plan spoiler it's not i've got an update about the 5 000 pound t-shirt and we've

got some toaster data so stay listening so matt one of my favorite things about life is when people expect an item that they've ordered to be a particular size. And then when it shows up, it's either way bigger or way smaller than they expected. I mean, that is just inherently funny. Oh, it's so, every time it never fails to make me laugh. Like I always laugh at that. It goes around every year, but that one with the teddy bear with the really long legs. I haven't seen that. They ordered like a giant teddy bear and then its legs are like twice as long as the bear itself.

And then the person in the review refers to it as like looking Gumby-like, which just for me is the comedy icing on the cake. first was like looking Gumby-like, which just for me is the comedy icing on the cake. Then Sarah Pascoe once ordered like a set of drawers, which when they arrived were doll's house drawers. She's also ordered a backpack in the past, which turned out to be like a teeny tiny novelty backpack for a child and not like a proper backpack. So yeah, I really enjoy those. They make me laugh a lot. I did that the first time I did online grocery shopping. What?

Like in 2007, it must, six or seven, around there. And I ordered it. And you know, it's just pictures. And you look at the picture. I thought you were going to say that you ordered 2007 of something. No, no, no, not far off. Well, I think, actually, I don't know if that was the time i've definitely done the order one carrot or two carrots and get like two kilos of carrots but the first time i did online shopping i got one of each it was perfect like i thought i was

ordering a normal sized washing up liquid and then a giant bag of crisps like a party bag yeah instead i got the comically small single serving 30 gram packet of crisps and i got like a catering sized washing up liquid and i put them like just next to each other and i was like yep this is the future yeah and the same thing happened i was involved in the Royal Institution Christmas lectures this year, which the fantastic Dr. Hannah Fry was giving. And for one of the sight gags and one of the legitimate educational experiments, I was meant to unexpectedly be wearing roller skates. And the prop people at the Royal Institution ordered roller skates to fit me, but they accidentally got a children's shoe size roller skate so these comically small roller skates showed up on set and everyone's like what are these and i'm like and they're like oh they're for matt they should have been listening to the first episode of a problem squared yes i was gonna say we covered this in the first episode because you reminded me about when i ordered some snow boots and they they could fit in a sort of a jiffy bag and I was like

if these are for me they can't fit in a jiffy bag and so I didn't even open them I just took them straight back to the shop I was too embarrassed I tweeted about how much I love this stuff and and the brilliant Sarah Jones who is at Sarah underscore jerks on Twitter also said I'm a huge fan of teeny tiny versus large lab equipment who's using you five millimeter beaker and like they are so so tiny they look like thimbles they're adorable oh well you know I follow an Instagram account called tiny kitchen and it's where people make food using teeny tiny things like doll's house furniture and stuff I love it it. So my point is it got me thinking about maybe this obsession with size comes from being an Aussie. Because as Australians, we're a big fan of our big little things.

Yes. So we'll take a normal size thing and then make it huge. So in South Australia, we've got the big rocking horse. You do. Which is really, really big. It doesn't rock though, which I'm not sure if that counts. If it doesn't rock, is it a'm not sure if that counts oh if it doesn't rock is it a rocking horse it might disqualify it um there's a big koala on the way to melbourne when you're driving up from adelaide and just to paint the picture for people who've not been to australia

you'd be driving down the road and it's like a tourist attraction it's just a big version of a normal object by the side of the road just to encourage people to stop there while they're traveling yeah i would say there's two versions of it it's either a thing that's big enough for you to go into yep yeah and go up some steps and stuff inside like a big statue or it's usually a massive model on top of like a car dealership. Oh yes. Or a service station. So I think I, I think I saw the big prawn in New South Wales up near towards Queensland. I think it was.

And I'm like on the border. And that was just one of those massive ones that sits on top of a, like a shopping center or something. Yeah. Yeah. I'm less, I'm less sold by the big thing on top of a building. I want it to be a big thing in its own right.

Yeah. Fair. Yeah. And so one of my favorites, I've taken Lucy, my wife, who is British, when I'm showing her this is Australia, I've taken her to see some big things. Sounds so dodgy. It does. I mean, just everything's...

Yeah. Anyway. So I've taken her to see the big galah. It's eight meters tall for people who are trying to picture how big we're talking here. And so it's basically a bird, a galah, but made out of, I think it's like fiberglass or something. And it's eight meters tall. That's in South Australia. That was when we were driving from one side of the country to the other.

And we've been to the big camera. Oh. Which is a camera museum. But the thing about a building is it's just a big cuboid, as are old school cameras. And so all they've done is put a cylinder on the front to be the lens. And now they've declared the entire building to be the big camera. Is it a door? Yeah, yeah. You walk in through the lens. I say you walk in.

It's never been open the two times we've been there. But this is in WA. If you drive into Kalgoorlie, it's a good stop. But it's never been open when we've been going through. I think it's just like someone's hobby museum about cameras in a camera. That kind of sounds awesome, though. I know, I know.

Matt, if you were going to take a cuboid building and turn it into a big thing that you then got to use as a museum for stuff, what would you do? Ooh, I would either do the big Rubik's Cube. Yeah. Or I would do like the big calculator. Actually, there is already a big Rubik's Cube in Australia. What? It's in New South Wales and I haven't found a photo of it.

It's a cement cube painted as a Rubik's Cube on top of a storm water drain on a beach. Oh. And there's no reference to exactly how big it is. So I don't know what the benchmark is for a bigger Rubik's Cube. I think you can make a bigger one. I think so. What would you do if you were making a big thing? Big box crayons.

Big box of crayons. Nice. I think the Crayola factory looks like that. For some reason in my head, I think the Crayola factory looks like the arts and crafts version of Willy Wonka. You know, I've been to the pencil museum in the UK. It's in Keswick.

Up in the north. And they've got a giant pencil. They've got like the world's biggest pencil. As part of the museum. Is it right? Yeah, they sharpened it with like a chainsaw when they first made it. Like it's a legitimate That's amazing! Properly made giant pencil.

From memory, it's on the order of five metres long. give or take. I want to know, based on Australia, as we're both Australians, what is the biggest thing in Australia based on scale? So not like the biggest thing just the highest or whatever. What is the biggest

in comparison to what the normal thing should be? Should be. Like what is the comically, or what's the funniest if you're going solely on unexpectedly big as a scale yeah yeah exactly okay okay do you know have a guess how many big things in australia i found 15 249 i know It's way more than I expected. And that's just the list off Wikipedia. And I took out all the ones I thought were rubbish.

Some were like, oh, the biggest little town or something. And so I took out all the ones where I'm like, that's not legit. And I was left with 249 big things. Was the biggest little town Adelaide? It wasn't actually. What was the most common big thing? What is there the most duplicates of? Oh, I feel like it's shellfish.

For some reason, I feel like there's like loads of different like yabbies and lobsters and stuff. Oh, yeah. It's actually apples. Oh, I never would have guessed that. There you go. The Big Apple. It's got a pun based in there. Oh yeah. So they're like oh you've been to New York. Now come to Wallamaloo. And you imagine exactly. And you imagine

the postcards. Oh I went to the Big Apple. I'm at the Big Apple. Etc. Etc. Yeah. One's in Donnybrook. One's in Sprayton. Towlong. Yarringble. The whole reason people have these is to draw people there in the first place. So they're never really in already frequented locations. Yeah. What's the biggest big apple? The biggest big apple I can find is about five meters tall. That's all right. It's not bad. It's fine. It's not incredible.

Yeah, it's all right. It's not bad. It's fine. It's not incredible. There's three big bananas and there's one big bunch of bananas. So they've gone all out. There's two separate big beer cans. You may notice I'm doing these in alphabetical order because that's how I've sorted my spreadsheet. Surprising number of cherries.

There are six big crocodiles. Oh, yeah. That makesries. There are six big crocodiles. Oh yeah, that makes sense. So four standard big crocodiles, one big crocodile boxing, and one big crocodile jumping. Jumping. Three big dinosaurs, but you can argue they're probably smaller than they should be. A lot of fish. They don't specify the type of fish. There are four of them, one of which is specifically a dead fish.

I don't know how that's distinguished from the other ones. Three separate Ned Callies, five oranges, two owls. It's like the worst 12 days of Christmas ever. There's a single big potato. Found a photo of that. Pretty disappointing. It's 10 meters long, though. So it is single big potato. Found a photo of that. Pretty disappointing. It's 10 meters long though. So it is a big potato.

It's a long potato. Yep. There's two giant rams, one of which I'm a big fan of. Here's another thing, right? Because there are two big rams, but one of them is only like three meters and one's 13 meters. Whoa. And this is a bit of a difference between what you get in Australia and what you get in, let's say, America or even slightly the UK, where in America, it's always the world's

biggest. And more often than not, it's the world's tallest. So I've been to the world's tallest filing cabinet that's in Vermont in the States. And it's just a whole bunch of filing cabinets stacked on top of each other and just welded together. World's tallest filing cabinet. I've been to the world's tallest thermometer that's in California out near Death Valley. It's just a bunch of thermometers taped to each other. That's just one thermometer, but it does function. It's got like temperatures that light up on it, which is kind of cool. But I think in other countries you have the world's biggest.

In Australia, there's just, it's big. It doesn't have to be the biggest. It's a big thing. Come and check it out, which is why you get the same thing over and over again. See, I'm against it. You're against it. What do you reckon? I think all the duplicates should have to close down.

I think anyone who's smaller than the other has to go. So in your research, Matt, what's the funniest thing? Okay. So first of all, I'm going to answer the opposite question to what you asked, because there are things which are called big, but are smaller than what they are. What? Well, I'm on the fence on this one. There's a big Australia.

They've technically, I mean, by definition, it's smaller than Australia because it's in Australia, right? However, technically, I think they call it the big map of Australia. Right. And it's arguably bigger than a map should be. So I'm going to allow that. It's five meters high. So smaller than Australia, bigger than a map should be so i'm gonna allow that it's five meters high so smaller than australia bigger than a map should be so is it like painted on a flat surface like a map or is it like a three-dimensional it's like a three-dimensional it's only it's 2d but it's an it's up it's like

a made from bits of metal sculpture of australia cool and um it's it's standing upright so it's also a terrible map yeah it's bad at both things that it's supposed to be it's bad at everything it's trying to do i think you should open it up and there's a slightly smaller australia inside it exactly exactly that that would please me immensely yeah they haven't put it on itself. So it's not a map of Australia. Yeah. Because it doesn't contain itself. And the worst one is there's a big Ayers Rock. So it's Uluru, but at a 140th scale. And it was at Leyland Brothers World. Where's that?

It's now closed down. Oh, you don't say. And so it was a restaurant. So you could go in it. It was the restaurant at Leyland Brothers World, which Leyland Brothers was a TV show back in the past in Australia. Oh, I didn't even know that. I thought maybe there were explorers. It's older than you.

It was pretty funny. So they have a small version of Uluru and that's the worst. Small version of Uluru, and that's the worst. So I then went through and I was like, okay, basically, this is going to be one by which everything should be the smallest. And the four major contenders are, there's a big ant, there's a big macadamia nut, there's a big olive, and there's a big redback spider. and there's a big redback spider. All of those are neck and neck depending on how big you think the actual thing should be. Okay. The trouble is, how big is an olive?

I mean, you look it up online and it's anything between a centimetre and two and a half centimetres. And the big olive, I found conflicting reports, it's somewhere between 11 meters and 8 meters tall. Oh. And the big redback is 5 meters across and a redback is normally about a centimeter across. So it's about 500 times bigger.

And the big macadamia nut, that's a building as well, 16 meters tall. And a macadamia nut is normally about two and a half centimeters. So it's about 640 times bigger. Okay. But then so is the big meat ant and the big meat ant is five meters long and a meat ant, if you look it up, is 0.8 centimeters long and that's a scale factor of 625. But that's within the fudge factor of me guessing how big a macadamia nut is. So you're going to have to choose. Option one is they've specified the type of ant, which is better than most big ants. It's a meat ant.

It's five meters long instead of an ant, which is normally eight millimeters long. And that was built in 2011. Whereas the big macadamia nut is just a building made to look like a nut from 1978 it is 16 meters tall because it's a building and a macadamia nut is normally about two and a half centimeters and it was inspired by the big pineapple so it's on the same site as the big pineapple if proximity to other big things increases the hilarity of like there's a big nut next to a big pineapple disclaimer different scale factor but still impressive does that add or subtract i don't know it's down to you i propose it's either the big meat ant or the big macadamia nut i'm gonna go macadamia nut controversial

personally because it's a very specific nut and i think that's a really funny thing to make big right yep they're indigenous to australia like it's a local nut yeah i've seen photos of it it's deeply underwhelming well like i think it's really funny that it's a nut i think it's really funny that it's a building because the idea that someone was like, you know what, this building needs to be a giant nut. I mean, it worked for the pineapple, but we haven't got as much effort this time. But also, if you were going to build something big, you'd want it to stand out and be the thing that is the talking point of the town. And I love the fact that they were like, you know what this pineapple needs?

A nut on an even bigger scale factor. I think the nut wins just for how dumb it is. And I think that that's Australia in a nutshell. So all we need now is someone has to send us in a photo of them at the big

macadamia Nut. It's in Queensland in Australia. To be fair, I will accept a photo of anyone with a big thing. You might want to rephrase that, Matt. Oh, let me rephrase that. Good point. I forgot how the internet works. I want a photo of someone with a big thing.

Here I am, cut adrift without context. I would like people to send in... Pictures of their big nuts. Next to... Stop trying to derail this. Next to a giant tourist attraction. I don't know. I feel like that's still ambiguous.

If anyone can send in a photo of them next to a big thing in the innocent meaning of that sentence that would be great specifically the big nut is that is that a problem thank you we have had two separate people who are both patreon supporters send us in the same problem, which I think just means we have to deal with this. Is it how do I be more original? So the first person goes into a lot more details. They've noticed a lot of lotteries going around as a way to raise funding for like the example they give is bushfire relief, but all these sorts of charity lotteries. And they were like, well, hang on a second. If you're an average person, could you like win the lottery and retire? Or is it not enough money to be able to win a lottery and

then retire? So basically, could you win the lottery? And that's your retirement plan. The other person was a bit more pragmatic. They've said, how much do I need to save for retirement? I know what financial people say. What do maths people say? So I think there are no two better people to get to pragmatically explain retirement than two self-employed comedians because it's an industry renowned for planning ahead. With that first one, did I say how much you win with the lottery? Because surely you could say yes if the amount is infinite. Exactly. And you get like these mega lotteries, which are like hundreds of millions of units of currency. And in those cases, you're fine. You get a hundred million dollars or pounds or something,

you're going to be okay. It does vary based on the country if you get taxed or not. So I should say it varies if you're in America if you get taxed or not. Because in the States, they will tax lottery winnings. In Australia and the UK, there's no tax on lottery winnings. You just get all the money. There is a tax on any interest or gain, like in Australia, even capital gain on your winnings. You've got to pay income tax or capital gains tax on that, but you're not taxed on the initial lump sum. Whereas in the States, you're taxed on the winnings and then you're also taxed on the proceeds if you make any money using the winnings.

So that makes a slight difference. And so what I thought I would do, because they haven't given an amount, is to kind of blend both these problems together. I'm just going to say, if you had a million pounds, is that enough? Okay. Or if you had a million dollars, is that enough? Yeah. And so you can do this for whatever your unit of currency is, and you can it up or scale it down multiples of a million you get multiples of everything i'm

talking about pretty straightforward i seem to remember there are a lot of studies that would say that like having a kid costs you like a couple of million if you're living in oh really yeah like by the time they turn 18 you've spent like a million bucks on them or something i swear i've seen maybe it's just headlines maybe i'm just one of those people who reads headlines and doesn't bother with the actual news but i feel like already i know the answer if it's a million surely not surely it depends on how old you are and well it depends if your parents made you pay them back because that'll put you on a back foot um but if you've got if you've got a million well i'm also it depends how long you're going to be retired for right so i've gone with 30 years okay which is roughly 60 to 90

that feels like the max you could say i'm not going to live that long i'll plan for 20 or i'm not going to retire later or earlier or i don't know. So I'm just going to do it for 30. People can scale it or do their own calculations based on that. And so kind of the naive way to look at it would just be you've got a million dollars. You need to make it last 30 years. You just take one thirtieth of it every year. And that's about $33,000. It's $32,333. And you go, done. So in that way, you look at it and you go,

if you're happy to live on $33,000 a year, then a million dollars is enough to retire. If you want to live on $60,000, then $2 million and so on. And so you can scale it up, scale it down. Now, the problem here is, of course, inflation, because $30,000 now is very different to $30,000 in 30 years time. And I looked up the previous 30 years to see what inflation was. And in the United Kingdom, inflation has averaged 3.34% a year. So every year, everything costs 3.34% more. So over the course of 30 years, everything costs, it's about 2.8 times as much. Wow. That's a lot. It's a lot. And so it's as near as three if we're ballparking it. So $33,000 a year now is only $11,000 a year in 30 years time. So you're going to watch your income gradually go down. However, on the flip side, if you're wise, you're not just going to put that money in a pile. Under your bed. Exactly. Put it in a bank or try

and get some interest somehow to try and match inflation. Right. And if you can match inflation, because if you could find something that would average a 3.34% return in interest and inflation continues to average 3.34%, everything perfectly balances out and you get the equivalent of one 30th of it every year for 30 years. Because the money you're not going to use until a long time in the future, that'll be worth less because there's been more inflation, but you've also made more interest.

Yeah. And everything balances out neatly, you're done. So at this point, I need to stop and say, I'm not legally allowed to give financial advice. And that's not because of something I've done it's not specific to me i've not been you know had sanctions on me it's just no unless you're officially accredited you're not allowed to give financial advice according to the financial conduct authority yep so if i tell someone to go buy a coffee right now yep Yep. I'm breaking the law.

You're breaking the law. Well, if you tell them to go get a coffee because it's an astute investment, breaking the law. You can give guidance. And there is a distinction between if you're advising a specific person versus in general. So you could probably say in general,

huh, I think people should buy coffees. Like that's okay. Yeah. But you can't say, I think people should buy coffees like that's that's okay yeah but you can't say i think you should buy a coffee as as an investment decision right and i'm even a little nervous giving guidance so do not take any of this as advice legally and don't take it as guidance just sensibly i'm not a good person for guidance here. Is this going to be our first problem that we legally can't solve? Yeah. And while we have some very good supporters on Patreon, we can't afford a legal department yet. So I'm just going to have to guess what I can say and not get in trouble.

So with all of that in mind, you want to put your money somewhere. It's going to match inflation or maybe do better, but at a minimum, you've just got to match inflation. And so you need something which will track with inflation. So for example, you could buy stamps, not, not like collector stamps, not like, you know, uh, super expensive, rare stamps. not like, you know, super expensive rare stamps. It's not like you're investing in a commodity, just like in the UK, normal first class stamps.

So you're suggesting that we become like a prison economy. Like a prison, exactly like a prison economy, because that kind of something that's got an agreed absolute value by default tracks with inflation. Yeah. And a service that will never die okay good point good point okay i i see what you're trying to say there okay this is why i'm not giving guidance because the thing about stamps is in the uk at least if you buy a first class stamp there's no value printed on it it's just a first class stamp, there's no value printed on it. It's just a first class stamp. Whereas this year, the cost of stamps, first class stamps went up from 70p to 76p.

That is an 8.6% increase. So if you'd bought stamps before March, before the price increase, you would have made 8.6% on your investment just by buying the stamps early. Oh, man. I need stamps as well. Where do you get stamps during this day and age? In this level of bulk? I don't know. But then I double checked and the Royal Mail say that stamps don't expire.

Because you can get stamps with a value printed on them. And they say it's only ever going to be worth that value. But if you get a stamp with no value printed on it, it will always be valid for that class of male. Wow. So you need to get all your money, put it into non-value stamps, just like class stamps. Yeah. And then you just need to sell off tens of thousands of pounds worth every year. And you will track with inflation throughout your retirement provided that posting

things continues to be a thing so if you win the lottery spend it all on stamps that's what i'm getting i mean that's yeah yeah i mean now other people are going to say well hang on surely you can get more interest than stamps and yes so the stock market i mean this is way beyond guidance because the stock market is dangerous because it can plummet as we've seen very recently it tends to average around 10 a year which is very good in the same 30 years that i got the inflation data from the stock market averaged a 13 increase every, but that's just average. Like it goes up and down all over the shop. So this is why I'm not allowed to give financial advice because it's dangerous to just say,

but you get a better average return in the stock market. Yeah, but that's average. And if it crashes right when you got to retire or you can wipe out your savings, right? So I gets dangerous. So like all these things, of course, you can just get someone else to do it for you. So you can go online and get free guidance. There's several organizations in the UK, and I assume in other countries, that offer free official guidance on retirement. And of course, you can actually pay for advice from someone who is registered and what you'll end up doing if you really want to avoid all the risks and you don't think my stamp suggestion is

a good one you could just go and buy a thing called an annuity which is where you pay a bunch of money up front and then they guarantee a certain amount of money they'll give you back every year until you die and that's insuring against you accidentally living too long. And this is the big difference between things that happen on average and things which are specific to one person. Because as an individual, you've only got one life. You've only got one retirement. You've only got one retirement fund. It's dangerous to plan that based on averages, because if you live an above average amount of time, you're in trouble. If your investments do a below average return,

you're in trouble. Whereas for like a big organization who are providing pensions or annuities to lots of people, they're fine with averages. Someone lives longer than average, someone's less than average, it all comes out in the wash. And so that's why it's probably not something you should try to piece together yourself. You should actually go and get some legitimate advice. And to tie it all together, a lot of lotteries in the US, instead of taking a lump sum, you can take it as an annuity where you get a set amount every year. Sometimes they cap it like for 30 years, you'll gradually get it paid out to you. So they've already kind of got that baked in. I mean, the thing I've not pointed out here is your chance of winning the lottery is embarrassingly small.

So it's not a good strategy from that point of view. Don't do it. And I've not looked into how you can invest money or have money tracking inflation while you're working. There's a lot going on. So actually, in a very literal sense, given the second person, Eric Jensen's question on Patreon, how much do you say for retirement? I know what financial people say. What do math people say? Math people say, listen to the financial people. That's my answer. And non-math people say, listen to the financial people. That's my answer.

And non-maths people say, give it to Beckhill. Oh, really? Are you running like, is it like a Ponzi scam or something? Yeah, that's right. Beckhill dollars. That's also a legitimate way to save for retirement. Yeah. I mean, we legally can't say that.

Oh, yeah. We will infer it heavily. We have got to get a legal department. So because we legally can't answer that one i'm gonna say uh dong no no comment this is an update on a previous problem which was the five thousand pound t-shirt one, the 5KTS, where you helped me divide a t-shirt into 500 equal squares so that I could sell sponsorship of each of the squares and put in people's pictures or whatever and raise money for WaterAid. And you ended up with decent-sized squares. Yeah, 3.5 centimetres by 3.5 centimetres,

which now the orders have been coming in since our last episode. It is interesting how many people do not realise just how small 3.5 centimetres by 3.5 centimetres is. And your marker pens, I guess the line they're drawing is quite big compared to the size of the square. Yeah, like the marker pens are minimum a millimeter. Oh, there you go. Right.

So, yeah, exactly. Yeah. So you've really only got 35 by 35 pixels to work with. Yes. Any good requests? What have you had come in? Oh, my favorites have been, oh, someone asked me just to, they bought a square and they said, just draw whatever you

miss most about melbourne which i thought was really nice so um i did the shanghai dumpling house sign from um lane because uh i i really love that place i love the dumpling house one person asked draw whatever squiggle you prefer and um and you'll appreciate this as a fellow aussie matt um i did a square that was just a picture of mr squiggle from when we were growing up uh because i thought mr squiggle when you said that and yep oh that's great which was a great character anyone listening should just do a quick google of mr squiggle he was like a creepy looking clown puppet with a giant pencil nose but he was really endearing and he used to turn squiggles into pictures. He was also friends with a grumpy blackboard.

Yeah, and his name was Blackboard. And then he'd be like, hurry up, and he would draw on Blackboard. Upside down. Oh, it was so good. It was such a good show. Someone asked me to do a drawing of a cock and balls, so I've done a rooster with some sports balls. Someone asked for a goose honking

so I've drawn a goose that's literally holding a horn and honking it. Good work. The ones I hate the most someone asked for samurai senior snails. But they've at least purchased four squares to give you

space. Yes, they did. It was still very hard. Have there been any people buying it for like advertising purposes? Yeah. So UKbricks.com got two squares, which is buy, sell, love Lego. It seems to be like a Lego swap shop type deal. So they've bought some advertising. I've got Unison West Berkshire. So they've bought some advertising.

I've got Unison West Berkshire. Unison West Berkshire. Yeah. I think there are financial services, so they might be able to help with your retirement question. Some really stick out more than others. Dank.me. So D-A-N-Q. So Dank.me.

They bought six squares to just have those letters. So danq.me. And they bought a square per letter. Good on them. Yes. Yeah. The dot goes in between, but I think that's fair enough. So that's just for their blog.

Nice. My mum bought four squares. Oh. And she asked for each square to say every life is a story, every story is a book. And I didn't want to make it too boring, so I've drawn it like it's written in a book. Like it's written in a book? Yeah. Good work.

But yeah, I've had a couple of hundred now. And you've been putting these up on, you've been Instagramming them as you go? Yes. And you may have noticed that someone in particular purchased eight squares. What? Did they specify a in particular purchased eight squares. What? Did they specify a shape for those eight squares? Oh, they sure did. A T shape.

Oh, I wonder where this is going. Yeah. So, Matt, you specifically asked for me to do a seventh scale picture. I mean, talking about small and big things and how much we enjoy them. Yep. You've got me to do a seventh to scale picture of the T-shirt on the T-shirt. Yeah. When this goes out, I will put up, I'll have a video and some pictures up on the Instagram

and the Twitter account for at a problem squared for anyone listening, if you want to check out. And you can zoom in on my little version of the T-shirt on the T-shirt. Yes. So my thinking was twofold. First of all, happy to buy eight squares because the money's going to WaterAid, who are providing hygiene and sanitation facilities where they're needed the most.

So, you know, because it felt like money squandered, but it's all going to a very good cause. Secondly, however, because you're drawing the t-shirt on the t-shirt at one seventh scale which i find hilarious you then have to do it again because obviously that t-shirt is going to contain the picture of the t-shirt which will contain the picture of the t-shirt so i'm technically getting infinitely good value for money out of that request. Yeah. To the resolution of your felt tip markers. Yes. I would say for value of money,

that that was probably the best one. It also took me the longest out of all of the squares that I've had to do. I'd be lying if I said that hadn't occurred to me. I had to do maths, Matt. I had to use a ruler so I could get on the grid because it was painful enough to put the grid on the actual T-shirt. But I tell you what, I'm really proud of it.

So I'm glad you asked. It was a good challenge. It's good. It's good. You've done an excellent job with it. Yeah. So my problem for the listeners is that there are still squares available. And we need to sell them up so that we can give £5,000 to WaterAid.

So the website you want to go to is bechillcomedian.com forward slash shop. And you'll see the links there for the 5KTS. And you can get yourself a £10 square there. We now have some toaster closure. Previously, Beck had some open questions about what happens if you set toasters to different numbers on the dial and then you either time them or you change the number while it's toasting. What will happen? We put a form online and thank you to our fantastic problem solvers out there. I believe we now have some data. Yes. The overwhelming result is that there is absolutely no sense to toasters.

Wow. Everyone had different findings, which wasn't helped by the fact, Matt, that whoever put this site together, Matt, That would be me. asked the questions in such an order that didn't really make sense for doing the science experiment, because we asked people to set their toaster to certain times and then change the dials and record what happens yeah but then

after that only did we ask them to time how long each dial is worth meaning that it made the other information very difficult to measure in fact one of the first people to enter data actually said, okay, it looks like I have to do the number two test first. Emotionally, this ordering disturbs me. I mean, that's a lot of, you know, unrequested feedback on the form. The overwhelming result I got from everyone is that it was hard to measure and it wasn't helped by the way that we posed the questions. You don't have to do the experiment in the order you log the data afterwards. No, you do. You do have to do it in the order.

It's like a recipe. You can't like put it in the oven first and then mix all the ingredients in. That's not how it works. Science experiments have to be done in order. No. I'm with them. One person seems to have different settings on their toaster, which then changes the dial that they have it.

So they've got, you know, different dials, but they've also got different settings. What? So they were getting different times. So on the lowest setting, one was 54 seconds, but in the middle setting, it was 1 minute 46. Oh, that's a mess. Yeah, it was all one person has a mechanical toaster

where they were able to replace the mechanism. They did say, I think in principle, as the part is user replaceable, one could remove the clockwork timer and replace it with an atomic clock or possibly a GPS synchronized timer in order to get scientifically precise

toasting times. There is a risk of fire. Oh, good point. And I feel bad for the person who had the dual-lit two-slice 20245 model, 2SLGB, because they realized that their toaster only goes up to three. And I suspect before doing this experiment, they never realized they should feel inadequate about the range of numbers on their toaster. But now they know that a mere zero to three toaster is a little underpowered. Yeah. But all in all, this experiment made me wish that we had never embarked on it. So what I did instead, because I thought this isn't enough

and these people have all spent a lot of time expecting results. Results which I don't think we could scientifically share. I don't think we can draw any meaningful conclusions from this. So instead I decided to draw congratulations. And I've done

these little original watercolour artworks that say a toast. It's amazing. It's a celebratory toaster. It is. It's toast coming out of a toaster. It's got some bubbles and it says at the bottom for your scientific contribution to a problem squared. I've made some limited edition ones. They're all hand painted for the people who did the tests in the website for us to say thank you and for the two people who initially helped us with the test in the last episode.

So I'll get in touch with them before this goes out so we can get them in the post for them. I figured at least their time should be rewarded. That's great. Yeah. I like a limited edition congratulations card for helping us attempt to solve a problem. Yeah.

And in a way, isn't the real problem the friends we made along the way? The problems we meet along the way. Yeah, exactly. So not so much solved as deemed too ridiculous to solve. Yeah. That is the end of this episode. Don't forget that we are looking for photos of your visits to big things, particularly the big macadamia nut.

If you've got one, send it to us at a problem squared on Twitter or Instagram or, I don't know, send us smoke signals. We should also thank all our new patreon supporters we have slightly overhauled the patreon based on some of your feedback so we've gotten rid of the tiny category now everyone on patreon gets early access so you can listen to this podcast early and we've put on a new i'm a wizard support level which is currently our top level. That gives you a bit of extra bonus content. But of course,

if you're not able to support us, don't panic. You're not missing out. You still get the main podcast. I don't know. I think arguably it's our strongest content. You reckon? I'm a wizard.

It's pretty good. So a big thank you to all our listeners and a slightly bigger, more specific. Thank you to our Patreon supporters who are slightly bigger, more specific thank you to our Patreon supporters who are... John Bevan. John Lewis. Jonathan Luthman. Gillian Freeman.

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