A Problem Squared - 014 = Final Cheese Drama and Quick-Fire-O-Rama

Episode Date: December 31, 2020

It's the end of year special! We have an update on the Cheese Cover Up, the results of the listener survey, and a selection of quick-fire new problems to round off 2020. Plus, what on Earth has Matt been doing to his Christmas tree? Head to @aproblemsquared on Twitter and Instagram to see images of listeners' cheese packaging recommendations, Matt's pie charts, and Bec's framed Christmas card.  

Welcome to A Problem Squared, the only podcast to ask the question, Hey buddy, what's your problem? And mean it in a lovely way. I'm your host, Bec Hill, and I'm joined by the wonderful Matt Parker. Hello. Yes. No, that was a more aggressive tone than we normally strike in this podcast. What? Hey, buddy, what's your problem? Yeah, exactly. I mean, I'm on board with calling everyone buddy, but you pulled it back.

But yeah, you got to say, hey, buddy, what's your problem? Hey, buddy, what's your problem? That could go either way, though. Yeah, you got to just get that tone right. Hey, buddy, what's your problem hey buddy what's your problem that could go either way though yeah you gotta just get that tone right hey buddy what's your problem there you go that's it what's your problem got the tone it's very important to get the tone and what else is important is to get the agenda for the show in this month's episode we are going to get some closure on the hashtag cheese cover-up. We've got the results of our listener survey. We're going to do some quick fire problem solving to try and answer as many as possible. And I found out what that word was.

I forgot. It was thanks. That's what you forgot, Matt. Thanks, Beck, for being awesome. Well, you know, it's been a very slick start to the podcast. So I'd like to thank you for that so far, buddy. Matt, it's the end of a year and our first full year of doing a Problem Squared. It's very exciting.

I know. What's been happening since we last spoke well so we're recording this right before christmas it people will be listening to this probably in the new year so i've actually spent most of the time since we last recorded trying to program my christmas tree which has kind of overwhelmed my life for the last couple weeks you're the only person i know who would say programming your christmas tree yeah i'm not the only person i know who has programmed their christmas tree this year so a friend of mine got you can get leds which can turn any rgb color so any of the over 16 million

different colors individually and a friend of mine put a chain of them around their Christmas tree. So you can play very, very low resolution Donkey Kong. What? So you've got barrels rolling down, but the barrels are just LEDs lighting up sequentially one at a time. Yeah. And then Mario is a light. Yeah.

And each layer, like there's one row of LEDs for the ground, one for like barrels and mario and then one for mario jumping and then that's it and so you and i had no idea this is matthew scroggs um who does chalk dust magazine a bunch of other great stuff i've worked with them before and i had no idea they were doing their own christmas tree project whereas i bought 500 leds and i put them all over my Christmas tree. And then what bugs me about these programmable LEDs is you can only really do effects in the order they are on the wire.

So you can have like, you know, color chases and things go up and down the wire. So if you wrap it around. It's a mess. Yeah. Yeah. So I spent a very long time writing some code that would turn them on one at a time and then use the camera in my laptop to detect where they are. And then I do this from four different directions. So then I got to rotate the tree by 90 degrees, repeat, rotate, scan.

Right. And so then I get the 3D coordinates of every light on my tree and so i can now have no yeah i can have like color like visual effects going up and down the tree and across and from the inside to the outside i it's i'm very very excited i love how this will get done by christmas eve well it's all working pretty much i'm still messing around with it a bit it's not quite as honed as I'd like it to be. But yeah, that was my... And I've been meaning to do this for years. And I don't know how you find motivating yourself to get projects done.

I bought 50 test LEDs. I looked it up over two years ago when I had this idea. And every Christmas, I've just been too busy. But what bumped me over the line this time is I was on a video call with a friend of mine and they had a bunch of LEDs out on the dining room table. And I was like, oh, what are you working on? And they described this,

they were building like a, actually a very similar, like a 1D video game on these LEDs. And then I was like, oh, I bought these ages ago and I've never got them done. But because I told them, this is my friend Eugenie, who does visual effects work. Eugenie was like, oh, I'll tell you what, I'll send you a guide because I went through and worked out how to make them work. And so she very kindly put together this Google document with all the

instructions. And I'm always hesitant to tell people about projects because I feel like you get a bit of the reward of doing it just by talking about doing it, which makes me then go like, well, that's that project done. Oh yeah. That's a genuine cognitive behavioral therapy thing. Oh really? If you, often when you talk about an idea that you've had, you get the same endorphin or dopamine rush that you would get from completing that task. And so that's why you should be really careful with how much you talk about going to do it because you'll get the rush and then you no longer need to do it because you're not drawn

to it by that chemical need. Yeah, exactly that. I didn't want to dial back my chemical motivation to program LEDs. However, on this occasion, I now felt not obliged, but I felt like there was someone else who I was not beholden to, but I didn't want Eugenie to have gone to all this work

to put together the document, and then I still don't do anything with it. And a bit of me is like, also, normally I'm doing loads of shows at Christmas time. So I can definitely excuse myself and go, I'm just so busy with these shows. That's not true this year, obviously. I'm like, well, you know what? Yeah. Now I've got a friend with a vested interest in this and I've got more time at home than normal. with a vested interest in this and I've got more time at home than normal.

So it was interesting because normally I wouldn't tell people, but this time telling someone because I was then responsible to have to go back to them and say what I did, I actually got it done. So I thought it was interesting. My normal strategy, I went against it and it worked. Yeah. This is interesting because we're talking the day before your big 40th, your big 4-0. That is correct, yes. Which is very exciting and I think it's safe to say that a lot of people, when they hit

that age, go through, you know, some sort of crises. Some sort of fractional life crisis, yeah. Yeah, I love the fact that you got there a lot sooner. Thank you. By days. No, I'm joking. I think that it's great. And I like, I think it's projects like that and things that keep you busy like that, which

will keep you going forward and happy with life as opposed to needing to buy a sports car. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. life as opposed to needing to buy a sports car. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And, you know, it's reminding myself to do projects, to make time to do these things because it's the kind of thing that kept getting bumped back.

I'm like, I'm just going to kick myself if I never do this. And so finally getting it done was very exciting. I will, I might put a video out on YouTube about it if I get organized. Yeah. Yeah. The video will be out before this podcast. Surely that's never backfired. So keep an eye out for that.

You have to do that because it doesn't make sense if it comes out after Christmas. So you have to do the video before Christmas. Yeah. That's kind of a deadline. Yeah. No. Good point. Good point.

Yeah. And I will put some of the code on GitHub if people want to have a look at it and write. I can't guarantee I'll get it to work, but if people want to write code for my tree, because in the end, Eugenie wrote some guest code that now runs on my tree to do visual effects. So if anyone wants to write guest code for my tree, I will have a link to github and some details below if you want to check that out so that's um oh man never have i wanted to code more so i could put a big old butt on your tree i was about to say yeah i'm sure uh someone will collaborate with you so many rude words to uh i know yeah actually that's the one thing it doesn't do yet i want it to be able to

display text that's my on my, on my to-do list. Next year. But anyway, how have you been? Have you got a tree up? You've been keeping busy? I do. I haven't programmed it. I'm afraid it's just a tree.

I tell you why I've been busy. I recorded, I went up to Manchester last Sunday before the lockdowns and I got to do eight out of ten Catsters comedy countdown. Finally. Yay. I was so envious. I bet. Yeah. There was so much maths, Matt.

I did dictionary corner. Oh, really? So I didn't have to do any maths. And I just did lots of, Susie Dent did all the words and I drew pictures. But that'll come out around Valentine's Day, I think, around mid-February. It's really fun. Okay, okay. So we'll remind people when it gets closer.

In episode 012, we had a problem posed to us by listener Adam Light via Instagram, which is at a problem squared for anyone on Instagram. And they wanted to know where the 41% of packaging from a new packaging shape of cheese from Tesco went. And we've sort of looking into it. We started the hashtag cheese cover up trying to get to the bottom of where this missing percentage of packaging was gone. And Matt, I believe you've gotten to the source of that problem so that you can provide a hot, delicious, melty answer. Oh, yes. And we didn't so much get to the bottom of this as go straight to the top.

I have spoken. We mentioned last time that I tracked down the name of the head of packaging at tesco i was able to get in touch with them and we had a phone call to discuss cheese packaging wow so this is the top top packaging person yeah right you know you can't go any higher up the packaging chain. We had so many theories. Like, we had theories about this. Our listeners had theories. You know, we still get messages from listeners who have other ideas of what it could be. But you've spoken to the person who knows for sure.

Yeah, exactly. And I put every single one of our theories to them. And they have provided comprehensive answers. I've got to thank James Bull for taking the time to, I mean, they're ahead of packaging. It's a busy time. I don't know if people noticed. It's currently a busy time for retail, particularly grocery shopping. And they took time out of their pre-Christmas rush to talk to me about the numbers of cheese

packaging. So first of all, we were correct. When we looked at the packaging, which claimed to use 41% less plastic, and we analyzed the dimensions of the block of cheese, there is no way to resize that cheese to reduce its surface area by 41%. So we were absolutely correct. That's not what they did. That was, however, one aspect of what they did. There were three things they did to reduce the total amount of plastic, and that was one of them. The second thing was, by changing the dimensions of the block of cheese, they reduced the biggest span. So if you look at all the different

bits of the packaging, the biggest span of plastic is now smaller. So it's now a smaller maximum span of plastic. And it's the biggest bit of plastic which is the most likely to stretch or tear. And so if you can reduce the biggest span, your package is now more tear resistant. And it means you can use thinner plastic. And this was one of our theories, kicking around. It was the thickness of the plastic. And this was one of our theories, kicking around. It was the thickness of the plastic. But the reason they could make it thinner is because by changing the dimensions, even though the volume was the same, there was now smaller bits of plastic.

Yeah. Yeah. And so they were able to reduce that. And this is a big deal because for packaging, they work out the total carbon impact of the actual product as well as the packaging it's in. And the packaging is less than 10% of the total carbon footprint of anything being sold in a Tesco. So if you have anything that spoils or breaks in transit, that's a huge carbon waste because now you can't sell that product oh yeah yeah so actually it's worth having thicker packaging with like a margin of safety because even if you uh use more packaging but

slightly reduce the amount of packaging which fails that's a big net carbon gain yeah and so they play it careful on the thickness and so so by changing the dimension, they could just dial it back slightly, still safe, but it's not going to tear. Amazing. And then finally, yes, they got rid of the resealable part of the packaging. So when we found the press release that the manufacturer put out, we noticed that in the pictures, the resealable section was gone. And we got very upset because the theory was people are now going to have to use their own packaging at home. Because I love that little resealable bit. Yeah. And now I've got to wrap it in, you know, cling film or glad wrap or etc.

Or I put it in a Ziploc bag. Yeah. as well, who'd sent in photos of the way that they seal up their cheese without using new packaging or waste or anything, which was largely using either rubber bands or clips, which are both very good suggestions. Clip is a good one. And actually, so I went, this was my, you know, I felt like a journalist. This was my hard question. I'm like, hey, so head of packaging, we're worried that you didn't think about this.

And they go, well, actually, they don't change their packaging unless they do a big, like kind of bit of market research on how people are using the packaging. So for every change, they will talk to between five and 10,000 shoppers to find out how they're using the packaging. And the bulk of them are drawn randomly from like club card users they send out would you like to be involved in this survey and they get at least 5 000 responses and then some people who sign up because they just love being parts of doing studies i don't know who these people are they sound like our kind of people but anyway they get thousands of people and what they found is a lot of people weren't using the resealable aspect of the packaging so even though

it had a resealable bit people were still wrapping it in cling film or putting it in a reusable container or doing all these other things so it was redundant yeah and so yes we were right for some people they were using that resealable feature to use less plastic at home. Yeah, correctly. I think we can all agree on that. But other people weren't doing that. And so that's a double waste. And then they factored in that they want to encourage the use of reusable containers and things like those clips and putting it in like a Tupperware or off-brand resealable container thing.

And so when they factored in this nudge towards behavioral reuse change, as well as people who weren't using it anyway, they decided it was a net gain. Okay. And so they got rid of it. I'll take it. There you go. Wow. It turns out that they put the effort in.

They took a serious look at it and worked out, it would be a gain to remove it. So there you go. That's the big result. So I found the whole chat very interesting. And occasionally they would apologize because they're like, oh, this is not actually the maths, but... And they would go into all the things you've got to factor in to these decisions and how they used to favor plastic

because it's very low carbon to make it's low mass in terms of transport it's very good as a barrier so that your products don't spoil it's very flexible and so actually it used to be the very obvious choice for packaging and personally big fan of plastic but then they're now factoring in that plastic uses virgin non-renewable raw materials because you've got to dig up oil to make plastic i'm kind of okay with that because then you're not burning the oil i'd rather it goes into packaging but you know i get that point and also now they're factoring in the end of life and and this bugs me because if we just were able to dispose of the plastic perfectly

it'll be an amazing product but they've got to factor in that it's not disposed of correctly and so now that's part of their consideration it means that plastic is going down their list but now because i've always been a big fan of plastic bags, a controversial thing. But I think unless you use the reusable bags enough, they never are better than plastic bags. But you've got this end of life issue. And I admit you can't deal with that. And so they're now wrestling with, you know, when you get like the super thin plastic bags that you put like your fruit and veg and stuff in. fruit and veg and stuff in. They're like, oh, in theory,

if we switch this to paper bags, that would be net better for the environment because of the end of use. However, they're worse on carbon. But also there's the public perception because people look at the paper bags and go, well, these are terrible. We shouldn't be using paper bags. That's not good, you know,

deforestation and all that. So they've got to balance all the different impacts of the packaging as well as how consumers will use it like should they bring in reusable nets that you put the produce in but now they're going to work out the average uses required for that to be a net gain yeah pun very much intended and so they're constantly having to slide and adjust all these variables. And I will say, no, I think that's great. And I love the fact

they were discussing it with me because part of my point is, it's never just the one statistic. You've got to think through all the knock-on effects and other things that you're changing. And so we had a great chat. Then we started talking about shelf sizes. That was good chat. How many things you can fit on a pallet compared to how big a shelf is.

Oh, wow. That sounds like Oxford philosophical level stuff. Like how many angels can you fit on a pinhead? Can dance on the end of a fridge shelf. Yeah, all that stuff. And how different shops have different ranges in different shelf sizes. So if you were to go in and measure all the shelves in like a little, they would be a much smaller range of possible sizes

because they were custom built to be standardized versus Tesco, who have a lot of old shops, and there's a huge variety in their shelf sizes, but that makes packaging a lot more difficult to do. And so, ah, good shelf variance chat. We had a good time. That's what I'm saying. Yeah.

Well, you know, have fun with your best friend, whatever. I'm not jealous. I don't care. Oh, not as good as this time, buddy. Don't worry. So now we know sort of roughly where that 41% went. We also had a question because we suspected that Pilgrim's Choice mentioned that they'd also had a reduction in their packaging by 40%. And in the last episode, 013, we were trying to work out what happened to that extra 1% and whether someone was rounding down and someone

was rounding up. Were you able to ask about that? Yes, I asked. I said, look, I know you're a busy, important person, but our listeners need to know the exact percentage and how you got it. And they said they would go away and find out and get me the exact number. Because to put it on the packaging, they had to go through their legal department to make sure they had rigorously worked out this number. They had to do a Dexter. Oh, yeah. Our pudding squared kid. Yeah, yeah. Dexter. Yeah. Who worked it out properly. They did a Dexter. Oh, yeah. Our pudding square kid. Yeah, yeah.

Dexter. Yeah. Who worked it out properly. They did a Dexter. So their legal department, very similar. I mentioned they've got a very similar whiteboard to Dexter. They did all the working out in fine detail. And they didn't do it by factoring in the dimensions and the thickness and the Ziploc.

What they actually did was they just, they weighed the original packaging and they weighed the new packaging and they worked out the percentage difference in mass and so the old packaging was 5.8 grams the new packaging is 3.4 grams they have rounded to the nearest whole gram but we're gonna move on and then they worked out that there's a reduction of 41.4% in the packaging. And I actually accused them of rounding up because Pilgrim put 40% and Tesco put 41%. And I was like, oh, come on, they're rounding up. It turns out, no, 41.4% and they were rounding down. And they were rounding down. They were unable to verify Pilgrim's packaging because they don't do the same exhaustive fact checking for claims made by other manufacturers. So they were unable to comment on Pilgrim, but they gave me their exact working out.

So 41.4% rounds down to 41%. And there you are. Wow. We've blown the resealable lid right off this. So I feel like that. We've seen it through. Yeah. It took three episodes, but we now know comprehensively.

Just in before the end of the year. Just in time. We can tick this one off, where that number came from, why that number came from, and where that number is going. Ding! Ding-a-ling-a-ling! Thank you! That's the ding I'm here for. I'm doing that on behalf of Adam Light.

I can't imagine Adam not giving that a ding. I feel like I'm just watching that bit in Indiana Jones. You've just taken a dive under a falling rock. I've just slid under the closing rock, yep. And I managed to grab my calculator that fell out. Yeah, you get out. Ah, congratulations. I'm very impressed.

Well done. So the cheese cover-up is now uncovered. Or it's all wrapped. I don't know. Either of those. So we asked you lovely listeners to fill out a survey for us, which we posed firstly in episode 012 and then again in 013. And Matt, you have collated all of the answers to share with us

so that we know a little bit more about who you are listening to us now, how we can make the podcast better and more enjoyable, and just, yeah, generally do an end of year review. Yeah. And I thought, cause we had just over 200 responses. I was thinking, oh, that's pretty good. You know, we're, we're putting the effort in to get to know and respond to our listeners, our customers, if you will.

And now I know Tesco does five to 10,000. I suddenly feel a lot more inadequate. We've done 0.2 thousand. So thank you everyone who filled it in, who went to thatsurvey.ilikeit.aproblemsquared.com, one of my all-time favorite URLs. And the first question out of the gate was what people's favorite problem that we solved in the first year. Because it's difficult for us because we solve the problems. Yeah. We put them out in the world.

We check with the people who pose the problem to make sure they're happy. But we never find out from everyone else what's useful, what's not. So we asked for your favorite and your second favorite. And Beck, I've just sent you the pie charts of the top responses. The first pie chart is people's favourite problem. And then the other one is I've combined their first and second favourites. I've also only put in problems

that got three or more votes across both questions, first or second. So any problems that got two or fewer, you'll see they're in the other category, which is only 4%. So people were pretty in sync when they were listing the other ones. And there's a total of 23 different named problems from across the first year of a problem squared. Yeah, it's impressive.

It's really good. These are great pie charts, by the way. They're very pretty. Thank you. I'm also enjoying just the words you've used to make it more succinct what the problems are like big nut which i very much enjoy yep um big nut i mean there's no ambiguity with big nut we all know what that means not in this context yep it is interesting though because when we're looking at everyone's like main first favorite problem of all of the episodes the one that is quite clearly the favorite

takes up a lot of area on our pie it takes up a lot of area it does it takes up nearly a quarter of our pie in fact it's 24 and that of course was your topography one which was about land area with different heights of stuff yeah if the topography of a country changes its land area with different heights of stuff yeah if the topography of a country changes its land area i wonder if that got an unfair boost from being particularly memorable because i had to come back and apologize so many times for not putting the video out so i suspect because it got mentioned in so many episodes that's given it a bit of an advantage. Everyone just remembers it now. It's partly what was your favorite and it's partly what do you remember from all the other ones.

But other big, I mean, Too Much Pizza, that's strong. That was a very early one. That was strong. And Ferrero Rocher Pyramid as well. Ferrero Rocher. Yep. I'm quite happy because also burger sizes, it not a main one but it still came in pretty chunky. I'm very much

enjoying the amount of people enjoying food related problems because this bodes well for next year Oh yeah. The one that the most people commented on, this is like just my own impression from going through the data was brushing teeth. So that's a good

5% of people's first and it bumps up to 6% if you include seconds. But people saying that actually like changed the way they brush their teeth. Yes, me too. So I don't know if we changed how people eat pizza, but we've changed how people brush their teeth afterwards. And I'll pass that back to Dr. Sophie as well, who gave us the little answer on that, because that's incredible. The one that surprised me the most that I'd forgotten completely, pretty much,

but featured very heavily, and I'd be interested to hear your surprise entry, but the plane stack. Yes. When someone asked, how many planes can you fit in the volume of space that legally you're allowed to have one plane in, but how many could you fit? And the answer was all of them. That's crazy. That's like 7% of people's favorite ones. But I had totally, that had disappeared.

I really didn't stick out in my mind, but it turns out that people loved it. There you go. Yeah. Yeah. So that is very interesting. Do we have any other stuff that we learned from this survey? We had some boring functional questions like, what are you doing when you listen to the podcast?

What are they doing? I see you on. Are they bathing? Actually, that's a good one. I listen in the shower. You know, I didn't go through and collect that data. So I'm just flicking through. People are doing chores.

They're playing video games, doing homework. A lot of people are moving. We've got running or driving, driving, running, running down near a lake. It's weird what people, like someone's like eating lunch or laying in bed. They're the two times they listen to our podcast. Do both.

Do both and report back. So there you go. So people do a whole range of things and we ask them what country they are in. Overwhelmingly, they're in the UK. So 26.9% people

in the UK. America's very close, 21%. The reason I bring that up is Howdy. There you are. You're embracing our audience. And then there's a bunch of countries with only a single person. Portugal, one in Spain, five in Sweden. So, you know, this is out of 200, of course. But what I found was interesting was you've got a decision when you make a survey.

How constrained do you make people's answers? So if I had like a drop-down down menu it would have made data collection way more easily but we didn't we let everyone have complete free entry but it means i've got to then do what's called coding the data where i have to go through and manually assign each entry to an actual value or category because i mean there's the simple stuff where not everyone wrote usa some people wrote united states some people wrote us some people wrote united states of america so this some people put them put their their state in brackets afterwards or even here canada open brackets quebec closed brackets so i had to go through and go no that one's Canada. This one's USA. Someone's done United States of America, Washington State,

aka Cassidia. I love Washington State. It's a good place. And so there's a coding problem. And then other people have put like the temporarily United Kingdom, that sort of thing. And so just from a data point of view, I found it interesting that you've got to decide how constrained you make

people's entries versus what freedom you give them. But I went for more nuanced data, but it does backfire because I have to go through and manually code it. Same as when people entered, everyone had a different way of phrasing what their favorite thing was, problem, which is why I had to come up with code names for them. Can you imagine the people at packaging with tesco having to uh go through

5 000 or no that's not that's not how it works they have a better system could be i bet they don't so but i did it man it's only 200 entries so i did it manually i went through and i coded them myself the the one i didn't have to do that for and this may be the most important bit of data we got was we asked listeners do they have a pet hamster? Oh, yeah. It's a pretty binary question. So put it, it was yes or no. In fact, I limited it so they couldn't choose.

Oh, great. Drop down menu. Next time, drop down menus all the way. That's how you do it. Learned the hard way here. It turns out 2% of our listeners have a hamster. Well, 2% of the people who answered the survey. Who knows?

Everyone else might have a hamster and they're just too busy playing with it to do a survey. That's a good confounding factor. You suddenly got very interested in data science. You want to keep a pudding squared, a long-term part of this podcast. Even though the survey says four out of 206 people have one. So there you go. But you're right. People who have a hamster haven't got time in their lives to answer a survey

because they're living it up with their hamster body. Going on bike rides and whatnot. Excellent. There you are. So anyway, thank you very much, listeners, for filling in the survey. Yeah. So anyway, thank you very much listeners for filling in the survey. Yeah.

I've got to say I'm really relieved because we knew that we wanted to do this podcast together because we're friends and it would give us an excuse to hang out and for me to learn new things. It would be fun for us. Yeah. And then I was a bit worried because you have some incredible audiences and I realise that I have brought some audiences to this podcast as well. But you have a larger reach currently and I genuinely thought that people would turn around and be like, love everything that Matt does, get a new co-host. Like genuinely was waiting for, I was so nervous about the answers and what really struck me

having a look and i i haven't pie charted it but what really touched me was the amount of people who commented on how much they enjoy there was the use of the word banter quite a lot which i found amusing because i feel like you and i generally, if you said, oh, good bants, banter. Good bants. Yeah. I don't think that's how we would self-describe our relationship. But I love that. Yeah.

And I really appreciate it. It meant a lot to me. And I feel very accepted by your followers. And I'm looking forward to us continuing with this bants. Bants. That is not going to be our takeaway. And I'd like to thank that not many of your supporters wrote that I go into too much detail.

Just the correct number of people. Well, actually, I'll tell you what, one of the main feedback we got, wasn't it, was that they like the amount of detail you go into stuff and then they also like the fact that I get bored and say, okay, stop now. It's an important part of our symbiotic relationship. Yeah.

It gives me permission to nerd out because I know you're there on behalf of the audience to keep things remotely interesting. It's a big feature for me. Well, I enjoy learning. You make me come across a lot more interesting. I enjoy learning with our audience as well as from our audience. Oh, there you go. It's a big feature for me. I appreciate that. You make me come across a lot more interesting. I enjoy learning with our audience as well as from our audience. There you go. So anyway, we love you all.

And the most common request was more than once a month. But I don't know if we're able to fit that into our lives at the moment. But we will keep on making them for as long as we can. Yeah. It's not a no. We enjoy doing this. We don't plan on finishing anytime soon. Obviously, though, if you would like to help us out,

and not everyone can become a patron, and that's totally fine, the best thing you can do after that is just tell other people. Spread the word. Give us a five-star review on whatever reviewing thing you're listening to this on. And, yeah, tweet about it. Tell others. Follow us on social media at A Problem Squared. The more we hear from you guys, the more of a reason we have to keep going. Yeah, just thank you for being a wonderful audience and submitting great problems and helping us solve them and just being there.

You're all wonderful. We wanted to finish the year off by trying to squeeze in as many problems that we could solve as possible so we've got our long-suffering producer john harvey hello john hello problems quiet listeners wow yeah we're letting you talk for once first time we let him on the podcast probably the last um john you've got a bunch of problems for us that you're going to shoot at us we've got um at maximum two minutes to try and solve uh each one and then you're going to stop us when we run out of time so um are you ready i think i'm ready yes uh the first quickfire question is from adam batten on email and he, what exactly defines the difference between a biscuit and a cookie?

Yeah, I can solve this. They're the same thing. Next. What? No. No, they're the same thing. Same thing? One, they largely call it in the States

and the other one we largely call it over here in Australia. But in the US, a biscuit's like a savoury thing that you get with a meal. Oh, well, if they're talking about that, then that's the difference. The difference is, if they're asking what's the difference between a biscuit in terms of like a dinner roll and a cookie, then clearly the difference is one is a savoury thing. But I believe they're asking what the difference is between a biscuit and the cookie in terms of what's the difference between the two things that are exactly the same. And I'll tell you what it is, Adam.

Nothing. There is nothing. There is no difference other than the fact that different people have different names for them. What if you went to Subway? Matt, we are on a time limit. No, yeah, but we've got to answer it comprehensively. No, we don't.

It's a quickfire question. You wouldn't call that a biscuit from Subway, would you? That's definitely a cookie. It's a cookie. Well, it's named. Okay. So those are called cookies because Subway is an American company. So therefore, when they were doing marketing, they're not going to change the words.

I don't know. I still wouldn't call that a biscuit. That's why we call them Subway. That's why they're Subway sandwiches, not just sandwiches. That's why we don't call them baguettes. Like we call them Subway sandwiches because the brand is Subway Sandwich. They call them cookies. So we call them cookies.

But if they were a British company and they were like, oh, you can come with a chocolate chip biscuit or whatever. People would be like, oh, I guess they're called biscuits. Look, you know, I know about my food. I get very passionate about it. I baguette what you're trying to say and i'm prepared to uh bow to you as the food expert well i mean i haven't heard a ding so i don't even know if that's uh john i'm not giving you a ding yet what that's why we let john on the podcast i can't believe this yeah i

know that this is the quickfire round and it's quickly falling apart i just simply think the question surely is would the cookie monster eat a digestive biscuit yes i think the cookie monster would not turn down a digestive biscuit so um on that logic i'm gonna have to agree with beck i think your listeners might disagree but time will tell ha for me i'll give you a ding because this is the quickfire round and it's not for me to argue. The next quickfire question comes from at y4x1t via twitter and they say the fact in inverted commas that 63 earths can fit inside Uranus or Uranus if you're that way inclined doesn't make clear whether this is a simple volume comparison or whether it's considering sphere packing,

Matt's favourite subject. Can you shed any light? Yep, I'm glad this is quickfire. I feel like we've done enough sphere packing over the year. In fact, one person in the survey said no more scale-based problems. So I can see where they're coming from. But then loads of other people said it's their favorite thing they did they said you know they get the square in terms of enjoyment of the number of scale-based questions we do and so i'd actually

previously looked into this because my wife is a solar physicist the wonderful professor lucy green and it's a famous fact that a million earths fit inside the sun and we were like i wonder if that includes the packing or if it's just like the volumes like if you got the earth and liquefied them and put them in and the thing is for the sun doesn't make a big difference if you pack them in with gaps is 0.96 million if you don't you get 1.3 million it's a million either way really whereas putting earths up or in uranus then that does make a difference so i got the um i got this i can see you giggling on the video call back and i'm trying to read a spreadsheet here so i compared i know i know but i tried to move through this we're going to get up

this no through this so if you look at the radius of the earth which is 6371 kilometers compared to the radius of uranus which is 25 362 now i see why lucy says uranus the their um uranus is four times bigger than the earth 3.98 exactly you're doing a good job to stay composed there thank you and this is another scale thing right because that's just the linear size volume is the third power of that so you'd expect it to be about 64 i ran the volumes if you smushed 63 earths together, it would be about right. It would be a little bit bigger than Uranus, but only slightly. If you factor in the packing them with gaps between them,

you only get 46 Earths into Uranus. So there you are. I can solve your problem. That fact assumes that the Earths are no longer spheres. They've just been mushed up. If you keep them as spheres, you're only going to get 46 in tops. And that's how you pack Earth in your brainers. Thank you.

Okay, I'll give you a ding for that. Next question is from Luke Rebilaut, or Rebiu, via email, who says, I've never found a four-leaf clover, complete with emoji. Can you tell me why it is so and how to tip things in my favour? Yep, I can solve this one.

You're unlucky. That's why. That's why you haven't found a four-leaf clover. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Hang on. Finding a four-leaf clover is good luck. Yeah. So if you don't find one, you've got bad luck.

You've changed the causal link here because traditionally you find the four-leaf clover is good luck. Yeah. So if you don't find one, you've got bad luck. You've changed the causal link here because traditionally you find the four-leaf clover and that makes you lucky. Oh, it makes you lucky. Well, you're saying that correlation is not causal. So the other explanation is

if you are already lucky, assuming luck is some, you know, independently measurable property of a human. Yeah. If you're already lucky, therefore you find more four-leaf clovers. And in fact, they're not bestowing any luck upon you.

Yeah, because they're meant to be more rare than finding a normal clover. Yeah. So surely that means if you happen to find more of them, that's quite lucky unless you are tipping the scale, in which case you're probably like doing some sort of large scale clover growing facility or genetically modified clover thing. There's things you could do. If it's a mutation, you could just look in places with higher background levels of radiation, like, you know, Cornwall. Yeah, Chernobyl. Yeah, Chernobyl, that kind of thing. background levels of radiation like you know cornwall yeah chernobyl yeah chernobyl that

kind of thing i love what you're doing because normally people say that you find them and that gives you luck but you're saying no you've just you're not lucky enough to you don't deserve a four-leaf clover i didn't say it had anything to do with deserving i just said it means you're not lucky okay i didn't say you brought it upon yourself that's the point of luck if you If you could bring it, if you could control it through your actions, then that's not luck. That's actually like something that you've done. The whole point of luck is that doesn't have anything to do with deserving or anything. That's about, that's where privilege comes from, Matt. Check your privilege.

I agree. Luck exists. I don't agree. Lucky people exist. So I think you're right. It is privilege or other circumstances. John could ding us at any point and this would end.

If anyone listening considers themselves to be a lucky person and wants to prove Matt wrong, hit us up at A Problem Squared via social media. I'll be on your side. I probably won't even notice it though.

And that's your own bad luck. Yeah. Perhaps the luckiest thing I can do is say ding. Thank you. your side i probably won't even notice it though and that's your own bad luck yeah perhaps the luckiest thing i can do is say ding thank you very stingy with the dings okay this next problem is from rob antonishan or antonishan who says is the show title a open brackets problem close brackets open brackets problem close brackets or open brackets a problem close brackets open brackets problem close brackets or open brackets a problem close brackets open brackets a problem close brackets i mean that's great great problem rob i mean am i right to say that uh correct the title is a problem the title is a problem just full stop

um but that was great and i'm glad john read that out and the punctuation. Excellent work. So this is asking, were you to parse our title as a mathematical statement, what is squared? Is it R and then problem squared, or is it a problem all squared? And I think actually that answers the question. And I'm always fascinated by how people who use maths in their day-to-day life read out equations to convey where everything is in the equation by how they say it and so there's a subtle difference between a problem squared and a problem all squared because i think that's what that's what a math person would say if it was open brackets our problem close brackets open brackets a problem close brackets so person would say if it was open brackets, a problem,

close brackets, open brackets, a problem, close brackets. So I would say in this, it's like those forwards on Facebook where it's what's six divided by two open brackets, one plus three and all this stuff. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's just, it's ambiguous. And the mathematical answer is write it better so it's not ambiguous. And in this case, a problem problem squared i would pass as a problem problem thank you i didn't even know that there you go ding ding thank you yeah it should be ding ding ding ding thank you there's one more this problem comes from david may at david m

underscore may who says if you had a donut-shaped planet, I assume that if you went to the centre hole, you would experience gravity pulling you to the planet. So what would happen if you went to the centre of the Earth? More gravity being pulled to the surface or no gravity? I mean, if you're in the exact middle of a toroidal planet, a donut planet, the gravity would cancel out because you've got the same amount of mass in every direction if you're right in the middle of the hole.

But the same thing happens if you're inside the Earth. Oh, cut, honestly. Well, because gravity definitely works with my hole. If you were in the center of Uranus, you'd be equally pulled in every direction. But what's even more interesting is because if you're in the very middle of the earth it makes sense because you've got equal earth in every direction and there'd be no gravity i mean there's other issues in terms of like you know magma and pressures and temperatures but if you're inside a shell if you're inside like a a solid sphere like a macadamia like yeah even if you're

not right in the middle even if you're closer to one side than the other all the gravity still cancels out if you're anywhere inside uh you know a lead spherical balloon or anything like that you wouldn't feel any net gravitational pull in any direction because if you're inside a shell all gravity because the the amount of mass and the distances all perfectly cancel out. It's lovely. So if you're inside a planet, you're only pulled down by the planet, which is closer to the center than you. Ding.

Yeah. I wasn't sure if I was going to get the ding on that one. As far as I'm concerned, it's a ding because it means dingy. Love it. Thanks, John. Appreciate it. It's lovely to have you speak before the end. Same time next year, I guess. See you then, Bec. Yep. John, where can the lovely Problem Squared listeners follow you

on social media? Oh, that's very kind of you. I reside on Twitter at John D. Harvey. That's J-O-N D. Harvey. Or if you're interested in my intergalactic alias, I am also the politician from outer space, Count Binface, at Count Binface on Twitter and all your other social media platforms. The once Lord Buckethead, now Count Binface for people who have followed your intergalactic political career. That is true. I had an upgrade after a battle on the planet copyright.

Yes. Long story. I feel like some people, some of our listeners, like there's going to be a little just a little group of our listeners who we've basically just done a massive. What? Just dropped a bomb. And then we're just like, OK, I'm moving on. Like as if nothing. Yeah. But that's going to be a fun Easter egg for some people.

on like as if nothing yeah but uh that's gonna be a fun easter egg for some people maybe next week next episode i will ask you to solve my problem which is what do you do when you were lord buckethead huh and uh yes we should do that i love the fact there's now a tiny percentage of listeners who have now decided or in their view our producer john is more famous than either one of us and they're now a little outraged that we keep John behind the scenes, only allowed to speak once a year as a Christmas treat. I'm glad you think it's a treat. Well, we're almost wrapped up for this episode and 2020. So I want to thank everyone for joining us on this wild ride.

Just quickly, if there are any problems that we have brought up in previous episodes that we haven't answered that are driving you nuts and you're worried we've forgotten about them, please do let us know. We are on social media. We're at A Problem Squared on Twitter and on Instagram. So please do hit us up. There's a few others. I know we just finished our cheese cover-up problem in

this episode. Matt, do we have an update on your Christmas card problem for me? Yes. So Beck gave me a wide range of puns that I could use for my Christmas card going out to my math supporters. And I settled on the Yule Log Spiral because Yule Log, delicious Christmas edible treat.

And log spiral is a real thing. So Beck, I've just sent you the final design that I ended up using for this card. Let's have a look. Ah, that's great. Yeah, you've got a sort of Fibonacci sequence going on there sort of yeah so i sent this to my designer adam robinson who um put this together for me and it's like it's a fibonacci spiral it's a log spiral so so the yule log is like a spiral baked cake like product with a spiral of icing on the inside. And so Adam photoshopped one with a cross section is a log spiral,

which is a specific maths type of spiral. And so, and that just says your log spiral. The inside says something like, may your joy spiral forever out, which is classic log spiral. Yeah. So thank you very much.

That is definitely a problem squared. Well, I'm glad I was able to help you with that. And for any of our problem squared Patreons, you will either be receiving or have received a problem squared Christmas card that I designed an email or potentially even via post. If you're one of our wizard level, uh, Patreons. Um,

but Matt, with that in mind, um, you've got a package that I sent you. Could you open that up? So I've got it here. It has remained. You've put fragile tape on it.

I don't know if that was an exaggeration of what's in here or if it genuinely is fragile. ASMR. Oh, my goodness. This is the original artwork. Yes. And have you made the frame out of Ferrero Rocher wrappers? That is all the wrappers from the Ferrero Rocher that you forwarded me oh that's incredible

I gilded your frame so first of all thank you for the onerous task of eating all those Ferrero Rochers that I sent over to you I put a whole bunch of them in the post for Beck unannounced and very kindly you've sent back oh that's very nice so I will find

a place to put this and I you know i'll put it somewhere so it appears in the background of a video at some point and i'll take a photo so we can put a beck will put it out on all our various social medias so people can check it out oh thank you very much you're welcome oh yeah i will put i will pop uh the photo of that um onto social medias and while we're at it anything else we've mentioned in this episode, you can also find on social media. So I will pop up the pie charts from the listener survey, anything like that.

I'll be putting up on Instagram at a problem squared or Twitter at a problem squared. Oh, that's so sweet. And all I got you was literally more Ferrero Rocher than any one person should have. Yeah. I mean,

to be fair, I still owe you a lot more. Oh, and the word was haptic. Oh, haptic. Haptic.

I feel you. Yay. I did reply to everyone who said haptic with I feel you. Nice. And people hitting me with feedback.

I thought it was very funny. Anyway, there you go. Happy New Year! money happy new year