A Problem Squared - 018 = Make Your Vote Count & New Species Amount

Episode Date: April 30, 2021

This month, Matt and Bec explore voting systems in elections. Bec wonders what effect it might have to vote for a novelty candidate. And we speak to a special guest who might just know a thing or two about this. Plus a whole heap of quick-fire problem solving! Here's the video Matt mentioned that simulates alternate voting systems: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhO6jfHPFQU&ab_channel=Primer  

Hello and welcome to A Problem Squared, the podcast which solves the problems that Google can't. Mainly because the problems are so specific that working out what search terms to use would be a problem in itself. I'm Bec Hill, the human equivalent of Bing, in that no matter how many programs are forced to feature me, no one takes me seriously. And I'm joined by Matt Parker, who is the human equivalent of the Contextual Web Search API, in that I refuse to understand him, but I still drop his name in order to impress nerds.

Well done. That's amazing. That was an intro. Yay. I did one. It had been written and it an intro. Yay. I did one. It had been written and it was delivered. Yeah. How did it feel? I mean, I feel psyched, Matt. I feel psyched. Good.

This is going to be the best episode ever. On this episode of A Problem Squared... I answer the problem of do novelty candidates spoil elections? I do a quick fire round trying to get through as many smaller problems as possible. And we have a new champion for the which species forms the longest queue. Ooh, I can't wait. Let's jump in. So Matt, it's been another month since we last spoke like this.

As always. Yep. Yeah. And you've got a new addition to your family since then. So true. You're right. I went and got a fridge for my hole in the wall project, which is very exciting. Actually, you're right.

Okay. Sorry. Two. I've got two new additions to the household one is the fridge i've not um drilled a hole in it or anything else yet but i've just located purchased and put a fridge um in the hallway it's in the way but that that's a little update on my connecting a fridge to the outside world as passive umation. Also, we picked up a dog. So now we've got Skylab the Labrador,

new addition to the Parker Green household. Yay. And approximately how many days did you go before you started up a YouTube channel for it? Oh, I think I got nearly two weeks. Yeah, that dog has got to pay its way. I've got a spreadsheet of everything that dog has cost me. And it's a lot.

What sort of videos does she put out? Mainly vlogs, dog vlogs. I don't know. So I've done one video, which was her running in slow motion. Because that was hilarious. Because she's got ears that are too big for her head. And they flop all over the place. And so I thought that was very funny, right?

But now I also want to train her to like wear ridiculous outfits. So I'm thinking I bought like a tie for a dog. So it's like the collar has got like the collar of a shirt on it and then a tiny tie. So it's like a little business dog. Looks like a tiny business dog. And so I want to do a video which is like Sk's first day at work and so that's cute um but i don't think i've trained her enough what i really want to do is open the front door and she sat there wearing a tie ready for her first day at work

but by the time i close and open the door she will have run off she will be somewhere else entirely so i've not i i've got ambitious video ideas but the training is lagging but i will um i will catch up if it's anything like with putting and putting's instagram it was that uh at first i was very much about trying to stage these pictures then realized how incredibly difficult it is to stage pictures with an animal or videos. And then I realized that whenever I have pudding out, I like playing with pudding. I don't want to sit there with my camera the whole time just trying to get the right angle because then you don't actually get

to enjoy having a pet. So I'll be interested to see how at what point you're just too tired and say do you know what i just have enough energy to play with a dog i don't have enough energy to film it as well yeah yeah yeah i can see that and i'm very much going off the pudding model here so it's good to know that's um that's a risk ahead i mean everyone knows dogs suffer from youtube creator burnout so i'll make sure i'm ready um to keep it so she won't be beholden to like a release schedule or anything like i you know i've learned the pros and cons of youtubing so i'll make sure the dog is is um familiar with these and um yourself how have you kept because you've been overwhelmingly busy between the last time

and now yeah yeah so the last uh the last episode we recorded i was um in the middle of filming make way take away at the studio yep your new uh breakout tv show yeah and we we um so we got the studio filming done we've just got location stuff left to do ah that it was exhausting but so fun oh my gosh matt i, because it's on a kid's channel, but I mean, I originally started in doing stand-up for adults and then started adding in child-appropriate stand-up as well. Yeah, because you also do stand-up for children, like you do kids. Yeah, yeah. And it's so fun. There was a bunch of crash mats at the studio, and the director's awesome, so I was able to be like, hey, in this bit, can I finish by falling out of shot?

And they'd be like, yeah. So they'd grab this crash mat. And oh my God, it's been so long since I was able to just do a proper plank, fall out of shot backwards, you know, without bending. It was really, really fun. Really commit to it. Yeah. Oh, I loved it. I got to do multiple takes. I was in my element. I got to headbutt a cake. I have a good life.

Good times. Okay. Now it's time to solve some problems. Our first problem is in an upcoming election, I want to vote for a novelty candidate, not just because I think it would be funny, but also because I think they would be good if they won. But I'm also aware that novelty candidates rarely ever win, and I'm worried that voting for them could be an irresponsible use of my vote. What should I do? That is a good problem. I like it. And who gave us that problem, Bec?

That was submitted by Bec via phone call to yourself earlier. Yes, it was. And I agree. Interesting problem. Because, I mean, correct me if I'm wrong. Your concern is if you vote for a novelty candidate, so we're saying like not one of the main candidates. Let's put it that way for now. like not one of the main candidates.

Let's put it that way for now. You're worried that by voting for this novelty candidate, you're going to have knock-on effects for the other main candidates? Is that the concern? Yeah, like could it skew the results? You know, like if I vote for them and they don't win and then whoever I would have wanted, you know, if they miss out by my vote, then I'm going to feel super bad.

Yeah. What you're worried about is like splitting the vote is the technical phrase. Yeah. And this depends on the voting system you're in. And I'm a big fan of, I'm a lay voting system nerd. I think they're really interesting.

And a lot of people, you're only really familiar with the one that you use in whatever country you're in, but there's loads of different ways of doing it and they've all got pros and cons and no it's not like like a lot of things in maths where you're like this is the correct answer there's no one correct voting method they've all got different advantages and disadvantages and in the uk we use first past the post which is just means everyone votes for a single candidate and whoever gets whichever the candidates gets the most votes gets in and so your concern would be and i'm going to put this in a political terms because it applies however you rank or put politicians on

a spectrum let's say you've got the circle candidate and the square candidate and they're like the big candidates and you personally like the square candidate. And they're like the big candidates. And you personally like the square candidate. But then there's also the novelty rectangle candidate. Yeah. And you're like, ah, rectangle candidate. And let's say if rectangle candidate wasn't in the election at all, square would win. More people prefer square to circle.

But if rectangle comes in, a bunch of people who would have voted for square vote for rectangle and now i mean combined the orthogonal shapes of square and rectangle have more votes together than circle but because they've been split between the two candidates they've both individually got fewer votes than circle and so circle wins and so i guess your concern is if i I vote for Rectangle, the novelty candidate, am I going to inadvertently make my least favorite candidate, Circle, win? Yeah, yeah, exactly. That's my question.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And the answer is, in a first-past-the-post, simple voting system, yes. However, we're both Australian. So in Australia, for those unfamiliar, there's compulsory voting, which I personally love. Well, actually, no, it's not compulsory voting. It's compulsory to go to the ballot box, walk in there, and then you can choose to vote or not. So you can vote or you can just do a donkey vote, which is where you write, they're all morons, and then you can choose to vote or not. So you can vote or you can just do a donkey vote, which is where you write, they're all morons. And then you put that in, right?

You draw a donkey. Yeah, exactly. Draw a donkey, whatever you want to do. And so it just means you can't not vote out of laziness or apathy. And it means, because it's compulsory, the government and everything has to be set up so everyone can vote. So there's no voter suppression. There's no making it inconvenient. There's none of this. There's a day when everyone's available. Like it's not a work day.

I don't know if the barbecues with sausages are directly related to the compulsory voting, but I think they might be. I think it's a great way of doing it. Yeah. For anyone who doesn't know, we have democracy sausages. Democracy sausages. Which is when a sausage sizzle in australia is when you know basically they'll fry up a bunch of sausages and yeah you get that for free usually usually um there'll be a free one on your way out yeah so uh i i mean obviously

i'm hugely biased i think australia's got it they got compulsory voting they've also got ranked choice voting so instead of like in the uk where you go in and you have to just pick one candidate in australia you go in and you rank the order in which you prefer the candidates so in that case you could go in and go i prefer them rectangle then square then circle and so you can work your way down and if your top candidate gets the fewest top votes then your vote rolls down to the next one yeah and then if they drop out it rolls down so it means you could just you can you can rank your preferences which doesn't a hundred percent fix the problem there are still weird situations where an additional candidate can change the ranking of the other candidates.

So instead of phrasing it like from your point of view, where you might vote for one specific novelty candidate, what we tend to do when we think about elections as a whole is just think if that candidate was in the race and could be voted for, would that change the other candidates' rankings compared to if they weren't in the race and they weren't even available to be voted for. And in some situations, let's say there was like a triangle candidate,

which is kind of between circle and square. They can stop one of circle or square. They can change the order in which they get knocked out and change the overall result. Right, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. And the reason I'm being a little bit careful about it is there's this thing called, well, technical name is Arrows, I think it's impossibility theorem or something.

And it basically says there's no perfect voting system. They've always got flaws. And people throw that around a lot saying, oh, they're never perfect. But there's shades of how good they are. And first past the post is terrible in terms of having spoiler candidates and splitting votes. What I'm talking about now with the rank choice is a fairly rare occurrence, but it can happen. And there's a big difference between can occasionally happen technically versus happens a lot. And so that's, you're way more likely to get a two-party system out of First Past the Post.

And for completeness, my other favorite category of voting systems is just approval voting. So you don't rank them. You just go in and list all the candidates for which you would be satisfied

if they won. So you don't express a preference. You just go, this one's fine, this one's fine, this one's fine, but none of the rest. And then whichever candidate gets the most votes of approval wins. And that's also really nice.

There are some weird complications in terms of how that can encourage people to vote strategically. And you can decide if you want a voting system that encourages people to vote genuinely, like can decide if you want a voting system that encourages people to vote genuinely like with the candidates they like or do you want one that encourages people to vote strategically and actually you know what there's an amazing youtube video on a channel called primer where they simulate these different systems we'll link to that in the show notes i think it's great but the short version is our first-past-the-post system in the UK, sadly, encourages people to have to vote strategically, which is why you're even having this debate.

Yeah, yeah. Because you can't vote your genuine preference. You've got to think, what are the knock-on effects? And I personally think that is a bad property for a voting system to have because it stifles change and it means you can't get these extra parties. And as a bit of a side bonus, what I like about the Australian system is if people say it's too confusing to have to rank them all, what you can do is just say, I want the ranking as approved by this party. So you go, oh, you know what? I love the rectangle party or the orthogonal party. I'll have their agreed rankings. And that means there's a lot of compromise and negotiation between the parties before the election so that they can move up or down where each party is in the other party's

preferred rankings and so i like the fact that it encourages um inter-party negotiation and compromise yeah yeah even before the election has happened which i personally i'm like ah that's a really nice side effect of that because there's loads of ways you can do rank choice alternate vote systems i like that little side effect of the aussie um system but in short yes and it depends because you have to be strategic it depends how certain it is where the other candidates will fall if you should vote for a novelty um unlikely candidate or not because if if it's a done deal for the other ones then go for your life it's going to be close then maybe you should think about voting strategically but things will never change like the fact it's a done deal is just how everyone

else is voting strategically so sadly the system does not encourage genuine voting. Interesting. Well, you see, because I think novelty candidates, like I think it's such a fascinating thing. It seems to be, I don't know whether I find them more obvious in the UK because I'm just older and probably see a bit more of the news now than I did when I was younger in Australia. But, I mean, technically I was a novelty candidate. I ran for legislative council in South Australia. How'd that go?

And I got votes too. I think I got like. How many? I think it was like 200, which is pretty crazy. Like at the time, considering that's like just my local area. And I didn't campaign either. I didn't have any like posters or anything. have any like posters or anything it was mainly there because uh the party that i was involved with just didn't have enough candidates and knew that if they didn't have enough it would look

pretty bad you are a ringer wow yeah but i just find it fascinating and and i think the novelty candidates often point out a lot of the flaws that are with the current systems and it's funny how the fact that i'm not sure whether i should vote for this novelty candidate in itself is pointing out how flawed the system could be yeah and obviously there's there's issues like people tend to vote for novelty candidates when they aren't happy with the current system and they what did you say protest voting protest vote yeah yeah um and unfortunately sometimes that backfires you know with certain presidents yeah yeah exactly yeah so yeah there's different types of novelty candidate you get like the fringe candidates or fringe referendums or something where people are like

oh i'm just going to vote for the ridiculous option or the the most different option so let's say that you know there's also this deleted uh dodecahedron candidate and people are like i'm just going to vote for the crazy one just as a ridiculous protest but if enough people do that it's got you know legitimate consequences yeah yeah well this is this is the interesting thing because i i think a lot of people see novelty candidates as just uh as just that as just jokes and every now and then a novelty candidate comes along who talks sense and i don't think i've ever told you about my favorite story about a mayor, an independent mayor of Bogota? No. His name was, well, his name still is Antanas Mokas.

So A-N-T-A-N-A-S and then Mokas as in M-O-C-K-U-S. I believe that's his real name. He was the mayor for two terms in the early to mid-90s. And he did like, he had all these sort of policies and things that came into play that were seen as quite over the top but they worked so one of my favorite things about him is that one of his initiatives is that he hired 400 420 mimes mimes yeah to make fun of traffic violators because people kept driving through pedestrian crossings and through red lights. Right. And despite being fined, they weren't stopping.

And so he reckoned that Colombians are more afraid of being made fun of than they are of being fined. So they had mimes at all these intersections. of being fined. So they had mimes at all these intersections and when cars ran through traffic, the mimes would make fun of the cars and chase after them and everyone would laugh. And it worked. Traffic violations fell.

They dropped by over 50%. They ran as a novelty candidate, as in like not someone who was expected to win. I mean, I don't know enough. It's actually quite hard to find information about it in English. I've only been able to research him based on what people have translated. Gotcha. But I found out about him at a science center exhibition years ago about the future.

out about him at a science centre exhibition years ago about the future and they were talking about they were looking at different ways that political systems work and leaders can lead and that sort of thing and they used him as an example of someone who used initiatives that were outside of the box but had really great consequences so it's just really fascinating. And I think that there's a lot to be said for candidates who have ideas that are a bit ridiculous, but could actually end up having a really positive impact. And just out of curiosity, Bec, who is this novelty candidate that you're considering voting for? Well, the elections I'm talking about are the upcoming London mayoral, mayoral, mayoral. Mayoral.

Mayoral. Mayoral. Mayoral. Mayoral elections. The mayor, the mayor of London election. Yeah. At the time that this podcast comes out, it will be about six days away with like within the week that this, that this comes

out. So I'm specifically referring to that obviously there's different types of elections and candidates all over the world but this is who i'm referring to i am of course uh speaking of count bin face who has taken part in previous elections here well beck i was able to pull some strings. What? And regular listeners will know they were very short strings to get on Count Binface themselves to put forward the argument for why we should have fringe candidates. So it brings us with great, great pleasure to introduce, I believe, our first technical guest on a problem squared live uh count binface hello matt hello beck hello listeners it's a pleasure to be here hi hi count binface hello

hello yes i am the aforementioned intergalactic space warrior and part-time politician count binface formerly lord buckethead in 2017 went a little bit viral then then i suffered a unfortunate battle on the planet copyright and uh some american film producer took over my twitter account after i got famous so uh i've had an upgrade but i'm back i'm bin face and i'm fighting to be mayor and i think most, if you're in the States, will know you from your John Oliver's Last Week Tonight appearance. Yes, that was lots of fun. Lots of fun. John and the boys and girls getting me up there with a lot of dry ice and lasers, which is my kind of thing. So I had a lovely time over in New York City, which is the second earth

capital to obviously the big one, which is London. Of course, if I was running in New York, I'd swap that round. So, Bin Face, you're counting us. As you've heard, we've been wondering about the pros and cons of having fringe candidates who may split the vote in a UK election. And I thought you might want to make the case for why people of London should vote for you for mayor. Well, certainly I'll do both those things, Matthew. It's a pleasure to be asked. Firstly, I must say, actually, I can give you a little bit of detail on the British electoral system because you referred to the first past the post system. However, the London mayor election, for which Beck is considering voting for me,

does not operate the first past the post system. That means two things. One, it means that Beck has more choice than she thought she had. And two, it means I know more about politics on your planet than a pair of humans do. Yeah. There we go. So basically, it works like this.

In the British parliamentary elections, it works as Matt's described. Each voter gets one vote only. However, in the London mayor election, Beck has two choices. She can vote for Count Binface as her first choice, and why wouldn't she? And then she can vote for or against Sidi Khan because ultimately that's what this election is

it's a referendum on the current mayor she can vote whatever she wants for the second choice, but who cares about that? She can give freely her first vote to Binface and everything will be hunky-doryory and just for for the listeners as well um obviously there's a lot of policies and initiatives that you have in place that i think would make london a better area to live um can you can you enlighten anyone who

isn't familiar with you absolutely i'd be delighted to it almost sounds like i planted those questions listeners but i haven't. She asked me freely. My platform is a fully costed manifesto which alights upon several key areas. I would, one, rename London Bridge after Phoebe Waller because she's a national treasure. It'll get the tourists flocking in when that's allowed again. And it would be lovely to give everyone a shot in the arm, AstraZeneca or otherwise.

Lovely. Second, I would have free parking between Vine Street and the Strand, but for electric vehicles only because I'm a progressive bin. What else would I do? I would make sure that the hand dryer at the Crown and Treaty pub in Uxbridge is moved to a more sensible position because it's insane trust me on that one that one needs fixing and get this one i will finish crossrail listeners if you're not in the uk they've spent billions and billions of pounds

on a gigantic tunnel and they haven't put any trains in it. Well, bin face will, an alien is the one to get it sorted. Now, count bin face. It's been pointed out that the UK tends to have more or at least more obvious novelty candidates than other countries. Is, do you have any comment? Like,

is that a feature of the UK system or is that just our biases? I can't speak for other systems particularly. Well, I can speak for my star system, of course, because on the Sigma Quadrant we have, my goodness me, we have all sorts standing there, I can tell you. It's quite a potpourri. I mean, not as mad as the other London candidates, but you get a few characters.

But as for the UK, I would say, yes, the first-past-the-post system in general elections does tend to bring up the eccentricity of British humour and marries that with a quite bizarre political system. And the reason for that is what Matt mentioned, is that several, in fact most, of the parliamentary seats are what are known as safe seats, which means that ultimately the incumbent, whether it's Labour or Tory or SNP or...

Can you believe this? Liberal Democrats. There's actually a few of them left. These people, some of them can stay in there for 20, 30 years because the demographic means they can't be beaten. So what does that mean? It means that once in a while, someone in the constituency thinks, well, if you can't win, you might as well have a laugh. And so they stand for, I think, an expression of democracy. And that is what I think is so wonderful about novelty candidates. It is a demonstration that in the 2020s, it is still possible for anybody to stand on any platform and campaign for free votes.

And you see it, these crazy, crazy candidates, people like Boris Johnson and Donald Trump, complete lunatics standing. And I applaud them for it. But as I say, you know, it's important that the sane ones like me stand too. I have to agree. I do like the fact that nobody candidates encourage like involvement in politics. So of all the ridiculous ways to get people paying attention to elections and pointing out the ridiculousness of having a system that encourages these safe seats. And I think just kind of showing how impossible it is to have a legitimate

third or even second candidate in some of these cases because of the way the voting works. I think nobody counts. They're great. I'm all for them. And serious ones like Count Binface. Well, quite right.

So there you are, everyone. If you are in London, the London mayoral election is happening on the 6th of May. And I don't think a problem squared, the podcast will ever formally endorse a candidate. But I suspect Vote Binface is the closest we will ever get. At the very least, we've all learned a little bit more about how elections work. Quite right. We also learnt about some of Matt's favourite candidates, be they square, circle and rectangular.

I say vote for the slightly conical cylinder. And ladies, gentlemen, boys and girls and everyone else, may the 6th be with you. As we have previously discussed, Beck has been working very hard on her TV show Makeaway Takeaway, which means she hasn't been able to do the kind of in-depth

thorough research that we like to bring to some of the problems we're given here at A Problem Squared. However, we do get a lot of smaller problems, and Beck is not one to rest on her laurels. So whenever she had a free moment, she was solving smaller problems. And so we thought we'd do a quick fire round of the small problems Bec has taken care of. Yes.

Okay, Bec, your first problem comes from Josh, who entered this in the problem posing page at aproblemsquared.com. And they say, their problem is how do i explain eurovision to americans yeah it's x factor but where the contestants are countries and cross with the circus okay which i mean half the show is complicated voting would you try to incorporate that in an explanation or you know they don't need to know that don't need to know don't need to know let them find out like the rest of us did in that you watch it and for half the time you go this is really funny and then for the second half year you start drinking yeah and you're just for some reason watching votes being tallied

i mean i love it okay you know what ding. Up next, Benjur on Twitter says, what's something I can say or do to make a good impression when meeting people for the first time? So I like this one because you may or may not know that I briefly did door-to-door sales when I was living in Australia and needed money which is when like you you know you get the people who come to your door and they either want you to sign up to sponsor something or they want you to sign up to change your electricity company or donate a thing or change your yeah change your power company yeah yeah and it was a it was an awful job, but I met a lot of very interesting, fascinating people. And one of my co-workers had my favorite introduction, which was that as people open their doors, he would hold.

His name's Chris Knight, actually, and he's a comedian now. But he would have a pack of cards. And as soon as they opened the door, he would just say this your card and then hold up a card and they'd be so confused that they wouldn't slam the door in his face immediately that is amazing and in related news beck is this your card that has just held up a card and it's not i'm afraid oh no hang on i got plenty more um i suddenly realized i literally had a deck of cards right next to me as you were saying that and I was like wow this is

never pass up a chance for unexpected physical comedy that translates well to a podcast do you have any I mean in general I find because I'm quite bad I don't have a quite bad short term memory so the thing I always try and do more for myself

is that when I meet people I try and do more for myself is that when i meet people i try and use their name as often as possible so that i don't forget it later and yeah yeah i mean i've i just do that so i don't appear rude um if so i don't have to ask them later what it was but i've also had or seen that um it's meant to be quite a lot of people quite like hearing their name heard. So they're more likely to warm to you if you're using their name often. That's what I heard. I don't know if that's true.

Yeah, I do for the same reason you do. It's so I don't forget. So I can cement that in early just by saying it. I mean, I go with the classic, ask them about themselves, which is for me is great because i already know about me i don't need to hear more about that so i just i think what are some interesting questions about them and that's kind of my um that's my that's my lead-in yeah uh body language marrying i think we i think that's the thing that a lot of people naturally do but that's meant to be quite

yeah i i i and i'm probably too skeptical for my own good i don't know with the slippery slope into this subconscious body language stuff i said i don't i avoid any of that kind of um matching their body i mean i'm not saying i take on aggressive body language yeah but i don't just like you know i've never consciously done it, but I have noticed that sometimes if someone is standing casually and I'm feeling nervous, I'll try and go, oh, look, they're standing quite casually, so I can probably search a bit and relax a bit. Oh, yeah, that's true.

That's true. Yeah. Yeah. There's matching the energy. Matching the energy. Yeah. Both conversationally, content in the chat, familiarity, and all of that yeah i agree

and i think uh it can never be understated well actually it's showing up on time is a big one for making a great first impression because what is it they say people count the faults of those who keep them waiting and i think it just shows a level of respect for people to show up on time. That said, I'll tell you what, I hate if I show up to a meeting, if it's somewhere other than the building. And if the power dynamics are that I'm meeting someone in a position of power above me, say it's a TV meeting. New TV show. Yeah. And so I'm meeting them for the first time and they're sort of in charge and it's outside of the office. If I get there and they're already there, even if I'm there early, I suddenly,

I still feel bad. Even if I'm on time, I feel bad. I would much prefer for someone in a position of power to be ever so slightly late, which then makes me feel less intimidated by them because i'm like oh they're human and they have faults and they're a little bit late for things and you've got a rolling start because you're like hey i was here on time you know yeah yeah exactly and you just feel a little less nervous because you're like oh at least um you know i seem early and keen to them whereas the other way around if i in a position, if someone wants to interview me for something, you know, I'm like not getting paid or whatever. And they're like, oh, yeah, can you get. And I take my time out to go meet them.

If I show up and they're not there, then I'm like, come on, dude. Yeah. So punctuality, say their name, ask questions about them, copy their body language. And carry a pack of cards. That is the one step I've already got down. Why do you think we're friends, Matt? Exactly. There you go.

Up next from Das Ganon on Twitter, they tweeted, if the location name Wyoming was a verb, and I've given some examples, i.e. running, parachuting, kaploding. I don't know what that is. I don't think I want to know what that is. I think you'll find it's the current version of exploding. Oh, don't mind me. I'm mid kaplode. Got it. They want to know Wyoming, if it was a verb, what would it mean?

It's a very obvious one, actually. It's the verb of wyom. That's it? Yeah. I thought it was to question why you're meditating. Oh, wyom. That was my wyoming. Why?

I suppose, you know, when you start asking a question as well, but you haven't thought about the full question, so you say wyom. Why? Wyom. That's you wyoming. So it's the act of wyoming. i did actually look up why um to see if it's a word and it is an urban dictionary and the most common obviously urban dictionary you can just put your own words in there yeah but uh it's the wikipedia of the dictionary but one of the

most common ones i saw was uh that it either means like wandering as in to think out loud or wandering with an a as in to wander around and it also meant to um like flap about like a worm so they were saying if you were sort of wiggling wiggling or flapping about looking a bit like a worm you you'd be Wyoming. While we were talking, I thought I'd just Google the history of the name of the state to see if that was interesting. Is it? Well, the territory was named after the Wyoming Valley. There you are.

Answered that question. Oh, the name ultimately derives from the Muncie, I think, word, Wamenk. I'm going to get that wrong. Meaning at the big river flat. There you are. So it's a traditional word for at the big river flat. There you are. So being at a big river flat is what Wyoming.

There you go. It's the act of arriving at a flat river that's big. Oh, you know what? I'm going to ding that. Ding. Ding. Ding. Up next at SX McIntosh on Twitter has said, how many podcasts should I subscribe to?

I like this problem. I don't even know if it's a problem. I don't think it is a problem. I think subscribe to as many as you like. As you know, Matt, I am subscribed to a lot of podcasts. You are what gives us authenticity in the podcast space. Because I listen to dangerously few podcasts. So you're listening for the both of us.

One that I actually want to shout out, which probably, I mean, more people have heard of than have heard of our podcast. But Office Ladies, if you're a fan of the US series of The Office, it's Jenna Fisher and Angela Kinsey who play Pam and Angela on the show. And they're just going through every episode in huge amounts of depth and detail as to every aspect of the episode. And it is a delight. light if anyone has been like feeling a bit and you know between our episodes of this show um wants to feel a bit um cheered up and like they're listening to to their two friends talk about something fun yeah office ladies it's delightful there you are i love it i'm sure a shout out from a problem squared will really put them put them on the map yeah swindled is another fun one as well which is all about um like white collar crime and fraud and stuff,

which is interesting. Oh, it sounds like fun. Yeah. So yeah, my answer to the question is I think you should subscribe to as many as you want to listen to. Ding from Alex on the Problem Posing page at a problemsquared.com. How many people have successfully faked their death

how is that a problem out no we don't question we don't question why people have a problem we just provide the solution and alex's problem is they don't know how many people have successfully faked their death yeah alex needs to know yeah unfortunately i don't know the answer to this question, but it was well-timed because I was looking at my podcasts and the ones that I all subscribe to. And they've just, like within the last week, have announced that they're releasing a new series called Suedocide, which is entirely about people who have faked their own deaths. Oh, there you go. So you haven't got an answer for Alex, but you can point them in the direction of more information. Yeah, Alex can go subscribe to Suedocide by Casefile. I don't know if it's any good. I haven't listened to it yet.

But, you know, that felt like a real synchronous moment. subscribe to suedo side by case file i don't know if it's any good i haven't listened to it yet but you know that's that felt like a real synchronous uh moment i suspect you could calculate how many people affect their deaths statistically if you had more than one way to measure a population size so if you had like the official births and death numbers every year, and so you're tracking what the population should be according to the people who claim to have died. And separately, you've got some proxy for population size, like consumption of food or monitoring like sewerage volume. And there's interesting things about places where they've monitored sewerage

to estimate, like, drug use in a population and these sorts of things. Wow. I think you'll find, Matt, that if someone claims that they have died, they are lying. Oh, yeah, okay. That's a good point.

Good point. I've missed the obvious point. They go, hello, I'm dead. Yeah, I good point. Good point. I've missed the obvious point. They go, hello, I'm dead. Yeah, I know. I got you. I got you. But, okay, let's say they didn't fall for that easy trap that would undo their scheme. Can I say that the problem with this is that after a certain amount of time, technically any fake death becomes a real death.

That's a good point. technically any fake death becomes a real death that's a good point so you would only be able to measure how many people will fake their deaths yeah like at that precise moment like at the between the time that you're measuring you wouldn't be able to say overall since the beginning of time that's true people who fake their death and that continues to be a lie yeah yeah yeah because like if you there could be like a thousand people who fake their death in 1892 but i'm happy to say most of them most of them have unfaked it you're right it's my favorite type of problem one that if you leave it for long enough will just fix itself um and i also i suspect i mean i'm impressed you've narrowed down my theory to just one major problem the other one is i

suspect you'd have to have a large percentage of the population faking their death like there'll be a threshold above which you'd be able to tell there are more people in a population than the death records indicate there should be but you wouldn't get kind of granular information on a smaller scale. So I think your advice to go listen to a podcast about it is the best ding we're going to give it. Yay! And that concludes Quickfire Problem Solving Round with Beck. And finally, we are on to any other business matt do you have any other business yes i have an update

from uh in our previous episode episode 017 we were looking at which species if you got every member of that like every animal in that species or whatever creature, and you put them in a queue so they're all lining up, which species would form the longest line? And we had a big debate, and we guessed it was probably chickens. Well, chickens, actually, if humans were not allowed to just lie down, humans would be just in front if we get to lie down,

and chickens would be in front if humans didn't because humans lying down all of us together would be about 13 million kilometers chickens we estimate would be about 11.6 million kilometers if every chicken in the world i'm queued up well someone has blown that out of the water they've come in with a new candidate creature what and part of the problem last time was i couldn't find an exhaustive database of every single species with their lengths and population sizes and so we were kind of just we were just trying to think what could the creature be and scott scott went to the problem posing page at problemsquared.com, which we recently added the feature, you can now submit a solution. And Scott went onto the page, they switched it from problem to solution, and they said Antarctic krill.

And I've looked it up. There are a lot of Antarctic krill. And they're bigger than you would expect for a type of plankton. So they're a zooplankton. So they're like the animal version of planktons. And they eat smaller types of planktons. Oh, my gosh. Like the one from SpongeBob.

I know. Oh, I guess it was a pineapple. So you could get an absolute scale in SpongeBob. Yeah. Yeah. So like the plankton. i always figured plankton were tiny um but this turns out krill six centimeters there you go wow and there are a lot so i couldn't verify numbers in terms of absolute population size but i did find some research which gave the total amount of mass and so the best research it seems a little out of date i think it was from the 90s but i don't think it's changed dramatically they estimated that there are approximately 500

million tons of antarctic krill floating around the south pole isn't that just insane and apparently it's up a bit because the like whale numbers haven't fully recovered from intensive whaling in past centuries and whales are not what normally keep this krill in check so there's a lot more of it but it's still apparently like half of the krill the antarctic krill gets consumed every year and they just repopulate like crazy and there's just huge like swarms of these things out there and so i was able to find out they're roughly two grams per antarctic kr. And so if you divide that through and then you multiply it by their length of six centimetres each, they're a bit longer than humans lying down at 13 million kilometres

because they clock in at 15 billion kilometres. Wow! at 15 billion kilometers. They are about a thousand times longer than humans or chickens. And they are all the same species. So it's not like ants, where we were like lumping all of ants together, but we know that there are actually thousands of species.

Yeah, or different types of cockroach. Yeah, exactly. One species, hundreds of trillions of these things cockroach yeah exactly one species hundreds of trillions of these things just krillions and krillions of them 15 billion kilometers that is off the chart i i cannot imagine another species is going to overtake that if anyone thinks that they can knock that the krill off the ant Antarctic krill off the top spot, go to a problemsquared.com and submit a different species in our problem posing page, which also accepts solutions, and we will run the numbers.

But I think that is our definitive answer, the Antarctic krill. I think that Scott has earned a very special ding. Well done, Scott. You got a limited edition ding. Wow. And that is it for episode 018 of A Problem Squared. If you have any problems, you can send them to us at our problem posing page, which is aproblemsquared.com. And we also like to pop up any links

photos videos anything we have that pertains to this episode on our social media you can find us at a problem squared on Twitter or Instagram once again we want to give a huge thanks to our producer John Harvey who also managed to link us up with Count Binface for this episode, and our Problems Curator, Steph Keegan. Bye! Bye! Oh, Bec, one more thing.

Yeah? Is this your card? No. Ugh.