A Problem Squared - 010 = Heat Fighting and Typewriting

Episode Date: August 31, 2020

- How can you keep cool when there's no air conditioning? - What's the best thing to do with a spare room? (If you're lucky enough to have one, that is.) - How much would the Big Macadamia Nut be worth if it was an actual nut? - Why are typewriters mysterious? Matt's long-awaited topography video, inspired by a problem in the show, is here at last! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtKhbbcc1Rc You can see the typewriter patent here: https://patents.google.com/patent/US207559A/en And for Bec's 5KTS t-shirt, head here: www.bechillcomedian.com/5kts/square

Hello and welcome to A Problem Squared, a podcast where myself, Bec Hill, and mathematician Matt Parker will endeavour to solve your problems. Is that alright, Matt? Great. Great introduction. Straight into it. Yeah, straight into it. Yeah, straight into it. How's about that? No labored analogy or anything. You've just slammed into the podcast as nothing. No chit chat. Here it is. This is what you're listening to. Strap in. Coming up in this episode, we look at ways to keep cool in your home office? I've calculated the value of the world's biggest macadamia nut. What should you do with your spare room?

Why are there no zero keys on a typewriter? And a few more updates for pre-existing problems. Stay tuned. Okay, Bec, we are in episode 010. I can see you're coming to us live from your recording cupboard. Yes. What's 010 in binary? Well, it's not very exciting.

It's two. Hey, episode two for robots. Yeah, you're right. Or episode 10 for my people. There you are. Exactly. So last time we spoke, I went up to Scotland for my mother-in-law's 80th birthday. And because we were really shielding the entire time because we didn't want to obviously make anyone sick while we're up there.

So this is like the first sort of proper socializing people I've been around for like the last four or five months or whatever it is. So it was strange. My nieces were there too and I got to see them and I I took my oculus up my oculus quest up yep so that I could show my mother-in-law like a safari thing because she's always wanted to go like on safari but you know she's it's definitely not possible right now so I did that and she loved that. And then I put my niece on a thing called Richie's plank adventure, which is where I think it's called that it's basically where, uh, it puts you in a lift and then, uh, the doors open and you're at the top of a building

and there's a plank that you have to walk to the end of and you can fall off it. Oh, wow. And, um, that you have to walk to the end of and you can fall off it. Oh, wow. And I forgot how scary it is if you've never used an Oculus before. And I made my eight-year-old niece cry twice. Wow, you went from the cool aunt to the terrifying aunt. Yeah, yeah. Put her on it. She burst into tears when she fell off the plank

because it is actually very scary managed to make her feel better by making her parents do it so that was fun damage control then she said is there anything that i can do that isn't the plank and i thought she meant in that game and i was like yeah there's a there's a one where you can fly around the city with a jetpack there's like higher and more dangerous things so i was like oh no because if she flies around then she's not like falling and it's a lot less scary so i gave her the little jet pack arms but i forgot that you have to press down the triggers otherwise the jets don't work oh my goodness and so i basically put her put her back on the headset

and she just stepped off the edge of a building and fell off again. I love it. Just burst into tears again. I was like, I am an awful, awful person. I can give you these placebo jetpack arms and off you go. Yeah, yeah. Absolutely awful.

So yeah, that's what I've been up to since I last saw you. Wow. Terrorizing young children what about you i've noticed i've noticed you've put up a video yes i finally did it so for people who've listened to the previous two episodes i promised i would put a video out with more details about a problem where does the terrain of a country change how you measure its land area? And every time I'm like, surely I'll get this out before the podcast goes live. And I missed my own self-imposed deadline yet again. But then I figured the next kind of

unofficial deadline was when we record this episode. And so as you noticed it went online like two days ago yeah i hope you could see like the scope of the video i think it's the best way like the scale why i kept getting more and more distracted and obsessed with making bits of it better and i probably should have drawn a line under it a lot sooner, but it finally exists. Oh, it's so good. I ended up showing it to, like, sending it to some friends and stuff. It is so epic and beautiful. And that theme as well, the orchestral version of your theme is so nice.

And I don't know who you got for the Geoscience Australia voice, but they sound really sexy. They were on point. I hope they get way more voice work. But then 12 hours later, I released a second video, which I'd foolishly committed to another deadline on. I've got to stop giving myself deadlines for videos. Oh, they'll never get done otherwise. I know, they really wouldn't. But technically on the same day. So I uploaded the land area video i then sat

down researched wrote film animated edited and released another video in just under 12 hours which was a new personal best wow and if people watch it they can see there's several points where i got a bit bored doing the editing or the animating and it's a little little cut a few corners but it works and that was a project i'm doing with a youtube friend of mine a guy called james grime on what people's favorite numbers are which are bigger than a million we're calling it the mega favorite number project and we just wanted to do something where all different youtubers made mathematical videos about the same thing and released them on the same day, just. And then we have a playlist where anyone can now record a video about their mega favorite number and we will add it to the list. So it's a mix of people who've never made a video

before and the biggest mathematical YouTubers all in together. It's great. I was wondering, did I message you and ask what your mega favorite, have you got a favorite number? Have you ever even asked you if you've got a favorite number or you've got a favorite number bigger than a million? You know what I want to say? 69 million. Oh, my goodness. Because that's the funniest millions.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So this is why we had this campaign, right, to raise awareness of big numbers and they make perfectly good favorite numbers. You don't have to abandon your small favorite number. You can also have a mega favorite number. So if anyone's ever been tempted or thought about making a YouTube video about mathematics,

if in the next couple of weeks you can make one about a number bigger than a million, we'll add it to the playlist. Our first problem is sent in by one of our Patreon supporters, thank you very much, named John. They must be in the Northern Hemisphere, which is currently summer, because their problem is, they put here, well, they've opened straight into it,

they just start keeping cool in the non-air conditioned home office i mean that's their problem in a nutshell they follow it on with when opening a window seems to let more heat in than cooling breezes what's the best way to keep cool whilst working at home um beck i i think I believe you've cracked this. Yeah. Well, I think actually we're both in a pretty good position as Aussies because I think we learn those little hacks quite early on. Like one thing, and this is my first piece of advice for John, is when you know it's going to be a hot day, make sure you keep your curtains closed

because that will limit the amount of heat that comes in like a glass house that drove my wife lucy who's british up the wall the first time she visited australia she's like why is everyone keeping their curtains closed there's all this glorious daylight and sunshine out there and we're like yeah which is gonna roast the house so yeah i do it here as well it i will habitually keep the curtains closed to keep the heat out yeah yeah and i kept doing it and gav couldn't work out why and i'll be honest i did it more out of habit than realizing why i was doing something and it wasn't until gav realized it was he was the one who went oh it's a lot cooler when the when the curtains are shut and there's part of

my brain that was like yeah duh but of course it's just never you know it's never been cooler when the curtains are shut. And there was part of my brain that was like, yeah, duh. But of course, it's just never, you know, it's never been a thing. So, yeah, I was quite surprised how many people didn't realize that that is such a simple hack. So that's my first one. My first piece of advice is curtains closed. Good hack. I mean, really obvious one is buy yourself a fan or an air conditioner. Like that would immediately solve the would immediately i feel like it's

implied that's not an option yeah yeah um one thing if you don't have an air conditioner but you do have a fan which sort of works is a bowl of ice with the fan um blowing the the air just off the top of it um it will slightly slightly cool the room not hugely but if if you're desperate it will be cooler than the hot air from outside and another hack which is again it's best if you've got a fan but is my i've done this on hot nights when you can't sleep but i imagine it works um in an office scenario as well is cold towel. So run a towel under cold water, drain it out so it's not properly dripping. And if you drape that over yourself with a fan,

that will cool you down and keep you cool for quite a while. Probably to the point that you'll want to take it off for a bit because you'll get too cold. But yeah, I've done that. To be fair, the reason I've done that mostly rather than just hot weather is usually when I'm incredibly hungover and I get hot and sweaty at night. And so I will drape a wet towel over me and then go back to sleep. We have a collection of just like flannels that we soak in cold water and then put on our like foreheads or faces in bed. Yes.

Yeah. Oh, that works a treat oh my goodness so nice you do that thing where you hold it by the corners and you sort of like whip it around in the air so that so it gets yeah and there's like a weighted eye mask but it's cool that's that's living yeah i mean you're either too hot or hung over for this scenario to have been a problem but in both those cases it works a treat yeah so yeah those are that's that's my uh problem solving for john i've got one more tip and that is you know how when you wash yourself with like minty shower gel it tingles yep just um just do that just do that

just cover yourself in the strain there you go that'll make you feel better hope that helps john i'm prepared to say ding i think you've done it. I'm on behalf of John. I think you've solved that problem. Ding! This next problem comes from listener Tristan on Twitter. Now, it's a bit of a backstory here, Matt, because as you may remember, a few episodes ago, we talked about big things in Australia and we decided that the Big Macadamia Nut was the technically funniest big thing based on how big it is compared to the scale on how what it is in real life and Tristan on on Twitter in fact we'll link to this in the show notes as well went and visited the Big Macadamia Nut for us, especially, like did an actual detour and filmed it, which was fantastic, but also came up with a brand new problem for us. Tristan would like to know what the value of the Big Macadamia Nut would be monetarily if it was an actual nut.

It's an interesting question. If it was a real macadamia nut what would it be worth thankfully i mean tristan was couldn't have been in a better place to have gotten the important information than a place themed around macadamia nuts so they had the question and they had the information we needed and i don't feel like we have an option to not solve this problem given tristan went out of their way to visit a big thing for us i think at that point you kind of get one problem free oh heck yeah yeah yeah we can't be like thanks for diverting your vacation to visit a ridiculous thing and take a photo for us oh you've got a problem well sucks to be you because we've moved on right so so tristan you got us i mean thank you for not requesting anything too ridiculous just the value of a

building that looks a bit like a macadamia nut we're at a macadamia nut i'm quite happy with so uh from last time to recap we decided that if your sole metric for how hilarious a big thing is is how big the scale factor is this macadamia nut was 640 times bigger than a standard issue macadamia nut because the building is 16 meters and a normal macadamia nut it seems on average is about two and a half centimeters however that doesn't mean the big one would just be worth 640 times as much because people will know i love talking about scale factors we went through this when we were building a statue out of pennies if you scale something the surface area goes up by the square, the volume goes up by the cube. So if you had a giant macadamia nut, which is 640 times bigger,

if you want to cut through it, you have to cut 640 times as far. If you want to paint it or coat it in chocolate, it's the square of that that the area is just over 400 000 times bigger whereas its volume is just over 262 million times bigger so it may be 640 times bigger than a normal one but if you wanted to fill it with macadamia nuts with no gaps you would need 242 million 144 thousand of them very thankfully tristan gave us the value of nut in shell is between four and five aussie dollars per kilo i've averaged that to be four and a half dollars a kilo multiplied it all through, that macadamia nut would be worth $11,796,480 Australian dollars, which you could probably just say is about $12 million. For our non-Australian listeners, that is about 6.5 million British pounds.

If you're in the US, it's just over $8.5 million, and it's roughly seven million euros that's a lot yeah that's an expensive nut yeah it's worth more than a nut than a building I think the building would cost less than 12 million dollars and I have to ask because that was nut in shell value just to confirm that if we're making that nut the size of the big macadamia nut we don't get like a change in the amount of shell to nut ratio do we i have assumed it all scales equally tristan also found out that roughly a third of the mass is edible and i have assumed the thickness of the shell gets thicker as well it would be a very different game if the shell stayed the same thickness because it'd be a super thin shell.

So I've just gone with, you're right. That'd be madness. It's a good question. Yeah. I assumed everything scales perfectly. In reality, that may not be the case.

Were there some tree that had evolved to have nuts at that scale, it probably wouldn't be the same proportions because of all these weird scaling factors as a small nut it's like insects have very different um you know body geometry and proportions compared to something about a human size compared to something uh you know an elephant or whale size because things and forces scale differently so i'm assuming this is just a magical nut that's been increased in size by 640 times

it's not a tree has evolved a way to grow nuts that big but excellent excellent i didn't even occur to me to be honest that's a great point how much is a third of what our giant nut is now? So. How much of our giant nut can we eat? How many kilos of giant nut can we eat? I assumed that a normal macadamia nut is about 10 grams or 0.01 kilograms, which means the giant macadamia nut is just over 2,621 tonnes of nut in shell. Whoa! Yeah. You would have 865 tonnes of edible macadamia nut. So no wonder it's worth 12 million.

That's so much nut. It's 865 tonnes of the stuff. Yeah. It's literally tonnes. I think that's a ding. But it's up to you, Tristan. It's your problem. And I think you went to the But it's up to you, Tristan. It's your problem. And I think you went to the effort of going to the Big Macadamia Nut.

So please let us know if it's a ding. Mike, one of our Patreon supporters, has written in with a problem. They opened with, hey Beck and Matt. Very nice. Dash. I'm moving into a new house soon and I have this problem that I need solving. This house has one additional room that I don't need. Show off.

I've added that. That's optional. Open brackets. An entirely new issue for someone who's lived in high cost of living cities, Sydney and London, for their whole life. Close brackets, full stop. What should I do with this spare room? I mean, there's a problem we're envious of. It's interesting how punctuation is really helpful when you're reading out something, isn't it, Matt?

I find it gets in the way, if anything. I've got to keep stopping and reading it out. And saying the punctuation out loud. Yeah, it really slows the whole process down yeah i was very excited about this problem first of all because when i was reading it initially i thought mike was saying that they had an additional room like a like a secret room somewhere to stay like not like like as in they they i pulled a book on their bookshelf and it spun around. Like a bookcase or something. Yeah.

And they're like, an additional room. But I think those ones you do need. So I don't think Mike would have followed up with one I don't need if it was a awesome surprise room. Which brings me to some of my suggestions, which is turn it into a surprise room um i think perfect straight off the bat so these are things that i've been thinking about if i was ever to move out of london and get a bigger place what would i do with other rooms um so i think the first thing i would do is build a bookcase door at least so if it at first it would look like just a bookcase in your hall or

something or i would at least disguise the door so it looks like the rest of the hall or whatever yeah the wall and then that way you can have a secret room great idea and then obviously that's where you keep all your secrets because secret room so um put your things in there anything you've got secrets you know bodies whatever um also uh i'm obsessed with and you could put this in your secret room or you could you know if you leave it as a normal room i'm obsessed with the idea of getting a murphy bed which is the fold down bed from the wall yeah you can get some really good ones if you if you look up murphy bed online you can get somewhere they're like desks where they just look like a normal desk and then when you pull it down, the desk actually stays horizontal.

So you can keep your things on it, but it just sits under the bed. Folds underneath. Amazing. Now, I hate to point this out, Bec, but you're thinking very much like someone who lives in a tiny apartment in London. Not someone who's got separate rooms available for a bed and a desk to be adjacent rather than on top of each other. That's true. Because actually the one time in my life I seriously considered getting a Murphy bed, but I looked at could I buy a bed from Ikea that could be hacked into a Murphy bed, which probably wasn't the best idea, was when I was living in London and I was renting a room in a place

and I'm like, man, I wish I could use this room for more than one thing. Yeah. But Mike here, Mike here's got rooms for days. That's Mike's problem. That's true. Too many rooms. Too many rooms.

Well, because I was thinking more along the lines of if you've got too many rooms, then obviously at least one of them, depending on how many rooms are there, is a guest room. It's already made out to be a guest room, which means that the other one is the room that you can do other stuff in, but can convert into an extra guest room should you decide to host a family event or some such yes in fact i would like to partially roll back my criticism because when we've got a spare room lucy and i it's always something and a guest room yeah because whatever you turn that room into it also has to be repurposed as a guest room, depending on how many people. And in fact, we're recording right now.

You can see there's like a bluish gray rectangle there. That's the mattress I pushed up against the wall because this place is my study studio. You've basically made a terrible Murphy bed. I've made a Murphy bed and emergency guest room. Also, you know, you could turn it into a guest room for either matt or i we can come and visit i think that's a definite option yep that's a given next time we're on tour we are super cheap so we're in the other reason that i think that i'm qualified to solve this problem is because during lockdown i've become addicted to the mobile game Animal Crossing Pocket Camp,

which is the free mobile version of the one that everyone's paying on Nintendo Switch, which I don't know how different it is to that because I don't play that. I don't play either. So I got nothing. So all you need to know is that in this game, you're a little person. You can make your little 3D person who you are. Right. And in the game, there's lots of little animal people.

And you manage a campsite. And it's a bit like Sims. Okay. You can like kid out the campsite with furniture and things like that. And if the animals, if the little animal friends like that furniture because of their, you know, personalities. You know, if it's a cute animal, they're probably going to like cute furniture. Then they're going to visit your campsite more often. Oh, that's good. Okay.

So it's a game. So you can link your emotional well-being with the whimsy and taste of artificial intelligence tiny animals. Yeah. If you want to put it that way got it got it okay and so there's all these little spaces that you have to like you know kid out with different types of furniture and everything and some animals are like really themed in what they like so there's one animal that really likes polka dot stuff so you want to like put loads of polka dot stuff in the campsite for them so like a polka dot couch and a polka dot rug and a polka dot stuff so you want to like put loads of polka dot stuff in the campsite for them so like a polka dot couch and a polka dot rug and a polka dot you know a coffee table i mean i

don't believe it but i think you're moving towards some practical advice out of knowing which animal likes polka dots right yeah so i think mike just needs to become like the something person. So Mike becomes the polka dot person or the aquarium person or the skateboard person. Right. And as soon as you go for a really solid theme, then that room, you just fill it with all that. If you're the fish guy, then just make that the room that all the fish are in. And then when people come round and they're like, what's in that room?

You'll be like, that's a fish room. And then they'll look in and be like, oh, it is. There's loads of fish in here. In aquariums or just on the floor. So you're saying Mike's just going to get a hobby that requires a room. Yeah.

Well, I mean, recently I've become a bike guy, which, you know, feels like every waking moment talking about and riding bicycles and a room in which to put bikes and bike related paraphernalia both myself and my relentlessly supportive wife lucy would appreciate that in our lives yeah bingo it's currently i'm you know I'm squatting on other non-bike land with my bike stuff at the moment and it needs to go. If you had an unneeded room, would you, is that, would that be your thing then? Would you make it a bike room? You know, actually I would love to, but I think I would find other uses for the room

above bike room. I feel like a, some kind of art creative space for Lucy is probably the next required room up. That's nice. See, there you go, Mike. That's the other solution. Find someone else who needs a room and then tailor it to them. So your solution is either get some kind of hobby that's very space intensive, requires room to put things, or befriend someone else who does.

Yeah, well, you don't have to befriend them. I'm sure Mike knows other people already. Oh, yeah, okay, yeah. He may already have such a person off the shelf. Yeah. But that's, I'm saying, that's where you're going. Yeah, okay, right. Find either you or someone with a passion that needs a room or secret room.

Yeah, or all three. I mean, I think that's pretty comprehensive. a room or secret room. Yeah. Or all three. I mean, I think that's pretty comprehensive. I think that's good. Cool. Should Mike report back with what they do with their room? And then we decide if we're going to ding this one. Yes.

Yeah, Mike, we want to see what you do. If you put a secret bookcase door, we'd love to see that. Or indeed, any other secret way of entering it. If anyone has a secret bookcase, sure. Actually, yeah, let's just open that up. If you have a secret room, we want to see it. We won't tell anyone, we swear. Oh, we're on social media at Problem Squared.

Do it that, send it to us like that. You may have heard us talk about this on a previous episode, but we got into a conversation a while back about how 007 is called 007 and not 007, which annoyed you greatly, Matt. Well, I'm adamant I say zero whenever it's a zero. Yes. Without exception. Phone numbers, years, you name it.

Exactly. You're very, very strict to that. And then a listener tweeted us to say that it is actually written as 007. It's not 007. In the books, it is 007. I was outraged. And you were furious. You were furious.

007. I was outraged. You were furious. You were furious. Not only the idea of not saying zero instead of O, but also physically typing O instead of zero. Who is Fleming that thinks they can choose how numbers work? Honestly.

You've ripped your shirt off. I mean, no one could see it, but you're like the Hulk. You stormed out. You walked through your wall and left a matte shaped hole in there it was i've never seen you so mad i had to cover it with a bookcase yeah and so we uh we talked about that and then we had another listener tweet us at a problem squared and they pointed out that um potentially it was because back in the day, typewriters did not have a zero, which meant that when you were writing

on a typewriter, you had to use an O, which might explain why it's branded as 007 in the books. And Matt, we talked about this. You said, I've got typewriters. I'll take a look at them and i'm interested to see what what you found right so first things first i've got two typewriters with me which is all i own at the moment i've tried to ration how many typewriters i have on a go at once so i'm just going to grab uh the first one here this is a more of a modern one. It's a Boots PT400 made in Japan.

There you are. And it has got a zero key separate to the O. However, we're going to, we'll regroup around to this one in a second. Well, because I was going to say, because the original James Bond was written much, well, the one you were showing just then, to me, looks like it was, yeah, about the 80s or something. But James Bond is much older than that. Yeah, just after the Second World War, 50s, 60s.

Which is why, bam, Remington. Oh, that's an old typewriter. Yeah, this is it, right? And this one, the typewriter, has got a zero. So there you are. So both, this is kind of a contemporary one, the kind of thing that Fleming might have

been using and your kind of 80s semi-modern equivalent both have a zero. However, I wasn't that surprised because I've been using typewriters on and off

for a long time. I got into them when I was at university when I discovered how cheap they were and secondhand like charity op shops. And I did once

lug one into a lecture theatre because I was at university right when Oh my gosh you're that guy That guy You set up a typewriter in a lecture Yeah absolutely because one person had a laptop and they took it everywhere and they were super smug and this is back in the

day where everyone was like oh look at the guy with the laptop money bags over there and so I i then sat in the same lecture and brought a typewriter and it was like it was like a second year civil engineering i can remember it accurately i was like okay hang on let me get this down let me go the main support and then i was off and racing right and then i only got one line done because obviously everyone's like who is this idiot yeah and i was like? And then I only got one line done because obviously everyone's like, who is this idiot? And I was like, oops, sorry.

And so I had one page of notes where the top line was types and then the rest was handwritten, which is what we used to do in the past. Can I just say that out there, there are definitely people who are like, you're the story that they tell over dinner parties about- That guy with the typewriter. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I had a lot of fun at university. I was a little reluctant when my career skewed towards being a university lecturer myself

because I was like, there's a lot of karma out there waiting. Yeah, yeah. To balance out. You'll get your Matt Parker. Exactly. But there are other stories for for i once got pizza delivered to a lecture theater good times okay so the um i knew from being into typewriters during my wasted youth that they don't have all the characters you expect they do have a zero and an o because

they are fundamentally different things however they don't have a one what so both typewriters i just showed you no one you're supposed to use the l see i would understand it if it was like the capital i or even a lowercase i because of roman numerals yeah but an l nah no an l looks a lot more like a one than you expect so actually you know what i'm gonna i'm gonna scroll up on this bit of paper i'm gonna give you a lowercase l followed by a two three four five a couple spaces give you a capital i followed by two three four five i've never felt more like i'm a boss in an old thing where i'm like, give me your papers on my desk at four o'clock. Oh, it's typed up and on my desk.

I don't know if you can see that on the camera. I want listeners to know that from showing it on the webcam, they look exactly the same. They look wildly different. Also, I'm not wearing my glasses. This was a terrible idea, Matt. Put them online. We'll decide later.

I did not think this through. So I was aware that typewriters, I guess just historically, have been as efficient as possible for the keys they give you. And I did look up the patent for the first proper commercial successful typewriter. And I've got that to show you here. This is the original patent there's the keyboard and you can see no one and no zero yeah so oh that was uh christopher latham shawls christopher latham shawls who invented the qwerty keyboard yeah yeah there you go this is this is the patent from 1878 see his name. I've got a joke about him, Matt.

Really? Which is that his pickup line is, hey, baby, if I could rearrange the alphabet, I'd put you and I together. Oh, look at that. I did. Solid, solid joke. It's an actual pickup line that people use, but also applies to keyboard setup. It's accurate for the QWERTY keyboard. Yeah.

I'm real proud. Yeah. So I'm looking and you're right. There is no one. No one. No zero. Yeah, you're right. Use an O.

Also, no exclamation mark. Oh, yeah. How did people yell in the old days? You put a apostrophe over a full stop. So you do like the full stop first, then you click back a spot and then slap an apostrophe on it. So you do like the full stop first, then you click back a spot and then slap an apostrophe on it. So you can combine the other keys

to fill in symbols you haven't got. I love the fact the shift key physically shifts the entire mechanism up so you get the other part of the stampy bit. I don't know the terminology, which I think is just amazing. And caps lock, locks it in place. It's, ah, technology.

Yeah, that's where they get their names. It's not the other way around, Matt. I know. They didn't make it do that because it was called that. No, but that's why everyone thinks shift, but I guess the symbols are on the key and you're shifting up.

But I love the fact that we call it shift because it used to shift a whole mechanism. I think that's great. Oh, it's like how on word the save button is is a floppy disk which no one today has ever used to save and on a on a uh a phone like the pickup thing is like a picture of an old school handset yes yeah yeah i love how if you want to exclaim something excitedly you you have to do the fiddly thing. Several steps.

Like, think about when you type something and you're like, but like if you were to do that then, you'd be like, and I'm very angry with you, and then backspace. I think that's great. People get emotional and yell too easily these days. If it took a bit more labor to exclaim, people might think it through before they start yelling at each other. I think you're right.

Via telegram. But I figure there's more efficiencies to be had here. So why have a T key when you can do an L and then go back and put a hyphen on it? I mean, that would work. You probably don't need... What else can we get rid of here? Do you need an 8 if you can go back onto a 9

and put a lowercase o on top of it? So I feel like they've gone for some efficiencies. Go for leet. Yeah. You know, get rid of the Z, use a 2. Use a 3 instead of an E. Yep. 7 instead of a T.

There you go. Great. So I love the fact you can combine the keys they give you to make extra symbols because obviously that like the more you can reduce the set as long as it's functional the more efficient the mechanism the cheaper the product what's really interesting is if you look all the way on the left second row from the bottom there's a key which has three vertical dots yes i noticed that it's like a ellipsis on its side yeah and i saw that i was like what is what is that like why was that a

vital key to have in the late 1870s i looked it up online people have got some theories no one knows no one knows what that what that key was for and people have found evidence that it was used so people who did like a thing where they pushed every single key at the top of a letter or something to show off the typewriter can do maybe it's maybe it's to display more you ticket you get to see your settings yeah yeah if someone else is replying to your letter that one just goes down so you you know that they're typing. It's not like people were like, maybe it's like a carriage return or a shift or something else. But no, it was a actual printing thing.

It would put that symbol on the page. But it was only the very first model of typewriter. And then never again. It was replaced with a forward slash. Christopher, what secrets were you hiding from us? Yeah. You can put I next to you, but he also put A next to three mysterious vertical dots.

We've actually talked about this in real life before, Matt, just talking about ellipses, because I was saying how I had always said if i ever had a kid um i would call them ellipsis um yeah so that they could have the nickname dot because it's short for dot dot dot very good which i actually ended up naming a show after that because what our shows if not my babies um but then you told me that you'd had a similar plan yeah name a kid ampersand because then you told me that you'd had a similar plan. Yeah. Name a kid Amphisand. Because you call them Andy for short. Come on.

I love that. Little Amphisand. Come on. Somewhere in a parallel universe, Dot and Andy, Amphisand and Ellipsis, are off on a play date. They're each other's type.

Yay! Yay! And on that note, James Bond is wrong. Absolutely. So, I've opened another problem. We don't know what that key is, but in conclusion to the actual problem here,

possibly, yes, Fleming used the O instead of a zero, but that's because that's what you're meant to do. It still represents a zero. Just because you hit that key doesn't mean we're going to... It should be O. It makes me angry. It's now time for everyone's favorite part of any given meeting, any other business.

Yay. And I, boy, oh boy, do I have any other business. Matt Parker. Yep. In the last episode, we talked about how I'm the ambassador for the Crafts Council UK. And we sort of went off on a little tangent about the fact that in the 80s, I think it was, maybe 90s, there was a classic Ferrero Rocher ad where it was people at a fancy party and a stack of Ferrero Rocher being carried around by a butler. And people are having it.

It's a very, very cheesy ad. In fact, if you Google it, you should be able to find the clip yourself. And it's all about being an ambassador, which is why we were talking about chocolates. Exactly. Like it's the ambassador's reception. Yeah, it makes sense. And I asked how many Ferrero Rocher,

could you guess how many Ferrero Rocher are in that little pyramid thing that he's carrying around? Yeah. I got very excited about calculating square based pyramids. You were adamant that it's a square pyramid. Okay. I was adamant, but I think I said, if they don't do it that way, they're doing it wrong. So always prepared to be wrong.

You did say that, which is such a sneaky way of saying if I'm wrong, it's because they're wrong. That's right. That's the truth. And so, yeah, we went back, reviewed the footage, and it is indeed a round. Oh, my goodness. Do you call it? I don't even know.

Cone? It's a cone shape. I don't know. I don't want to sully the word pyramid on whatever that is. It's more pleasing for me because they are circular treats. So I like them being presented in a circular fashion. Circles are just the worst way to arrange things. And then they're still like a, they go to a point.

It's still something pyramid-y. It's like a cone. But I don't know. So I'm curious to know what is going on a part of me thinks because it's a tv commercial there was just like a big foam cone that they're all glued to but i'm open to the notion that they found some interesting way to stack their spherical chocolates and maybe that's interesting so if anyone have a look at the ad if you think you can help me mathematically describe the geometry of what's going on in the old

ambassador reception for error share commercials matt at a problem squared.com or we're just at a problem squared on twitter and instagram everything, then let me know and I'll have a play and I'm going to see if I can get to the bottom. Not now, but it's going to be an ongoing project to solve the problem of how on earth they stack for our shares. And have we been lied to in the commercials? Matt,

when you eat an ice cream, does it have to be out of a square pyramid? Are you like, Oh, Cornetto it have to be out of a square pyramid yeah are you like oh cornetto you should be square no i'm fine with shape but that that's a cone in its own right whereas if you're going to stack spheres it's a shape made of other shapes and then there are rules so when it's shape on shape action i get i get um i get emotional and of course we want to do a big shout out to everyone who came on board as patreons patrons people who give us money yeah we've jumped up to 72 oh we're so close our

target is 100 100 after doing this for a Yeah, if we gain supporters in a linear fashion, we're pretty much dead on trend. So stay linear, people. Stay linear. We also just want to say, obviously, right now, not everyone is in a position to give, and we totally understand. We've all been in similar positions before. So I just want to say a massive thank you

to the people who are giving, who make it possible for us to make this for the people who can't give. The reason that this is free and it's out there and there's no ads and everything is because of the kindness and generosity of our Patreons. And we really appreciate how generous that is of you. Thank you very much for gifting us to the world yeah that's a mother's day card isn't it yeah now obviously beck hosts about a million different podcasts i think is it a million or have i miscounted 69 million matt that's that's the one um which you probably listen to all of them i have i'm a two podcast kind of person.

So I've got a new podcast with my Festival of the Spoken Nerd frolligs, friend, colleagues, Helen Arney and Steve Mould. So we used to run a live show called An Evening of Necessary Detail before live shows stopped being a thing. Beck was a frequent performer

on These Nights in London. I love it. It's such a good show. I mean, I'm hugely biased, but I think it's great. So anyway, we've turned it into a podcast of unnecessary detail and we're going to be releasing over the next couple of months. We've got six episodes all locked and ready to go where we basically talk about whatever nerdy things we're interested in, in an unnecessary level of detail i would say it's necessary other people differ but the first couple episodes are out pretty much now i think within a

couple days of this podcast so if you need something else to listen to i recommend either that or any of beck's 69 million other podcasts. Bye!