A Problem Squared - 032 = Mountains, Molehills and Mates

Episode Date: April 25, 2022

On this episode...   * How many molehills would you need to make a mountain out of them?    * How do you find friends?   * Matt revisits some mistaken maths.    Don't forget to send in your Blue Dot Festival problems to us on the website below - we might just do it live! And, as always, if you've got a problem or a solution, hit us up on aproblemsquared.com.   And if you want want even more from A Problem Squared (who doesn't) find us on Twitter and Instagram.

Hello and welcome to A Problem Squared, the problem-solving podcast which is a bit like a biscuit in that you can enjoy us anytime, anywhere, we go best with a cup of tea, and if the volume on your listening device is broken, we are difficult to turn down. Okay, yeah, yeah, I mean. Sort of makes sense. It's true, it's convoluted, but it's correct. And that voice you can hear there is one of your hosts, comedian, writer, and celebrity mathematician Matt Parker, who is probably a rich tea biscuit, I would say.

Oh, a rich tea biscuit. Yeah, because I think at first some people might think you're a little bit plain. Yeah, keep talking. But then you're surprisingly moorish and popular. Yeah, more popular than it should be. I would take that as an accurate. Is that one with frills around the edge? Oh, I mean, no, I wouldn't. Rich tea. Is that like a disc or is that like with frills around the edge oh i mean not i wouldn't rich tea is it

like is that a disc or is that like oh i know the ones yeah it's like i don't think they do have frills i think it's no you're right i think it's super plain it's the beige of biscuits but you can also use the middle middle-aged white guy of biscuits thank you you can also use it to calculate pie so i like it you are a rich tea and me on the other hand, this voice you can hear is the other host, a comedian, writer, and presenter, Beck Hill. And if I was a biscuit, I would be a jammy dodger because I am very sticky. Full of jam. Wow.

I mean, is that because you do a lot of arts and crafts? That leaves you with glue residue. You know, I'd like to say that, but it's probably just because I eat a lot of sugary things. You eat a lot of jam and sugar. Yeah, fair enough. Yeah. Yeah. I eat jam like Winnie the Pooh eats honey.

Just scoop it out of the jar with my hand. Surrounded by bees. On this episode. I've calculated how many molehills per mountain I'll help you find friends And I've got a correction to some maths It takes a big man to own up to his mistakes I'm ready

Matt, how are you? I'm good How have you been since the last two weeks? Oh my goodness I am now a million times better Than I have ever been before i see what you did there it happened it happened i'm now on 1 million subscribers on youtube oh it took so long you know what i could have done could have brought some champagne or something did i

nothing no i got nothing for you that's all right if anything i came over and was like i'm gonna stay at your place it's nice weather weather. You can entertain me. Yeah. That's your treat. Oh, and I'm going to be like. Beating a million subs. Thanks, Beck. Yeah. I did actually, I did bring giant marshmallows. Oh, really?

Yeah. Not for now, in case we have a fire later. Oh, we'll have a fire. Oh, I didn't bring my burning things. Oh, my God. We've opened so many ketchup cans at this point. Oh, yeah. Okay. No, we'll wind it back at this point. Oh, yeah. Okay. No, we'll wind it back.

Oh, my goodness. Okay. So I hit a million subs like a week and a bit ago and a day ago. I hit one million subscribers. But you're not counting or anything. You know what? People I know were keeping much closer eye on it than I was. Was I one of them?

I think you were one of them. I've checked a lot. And when it got to 97,000, I think I texted you. Yeah, you were like, you're so close. And I met some friends who came to see me do a show in Cheltenham. And you know that thing where I don't tend to pop out before the show because I'm getting ready and frantically doing things. I saw through a window they were there and I popped out just to say hi.

First words out of their mouth were, you're so close. And they had like the number on their phone. And what was beautiful about it was the day it ticked over, it ticked over in the morning and that night and the next night I was hosting an evening of Unnecessary Detail at Bloomsbury and I got to introduce Steve Mould. And so both times I got to make it all about me and my million subscribers the first night I got to the joke of uh I remember back before I had a

million subscribers it was this morning nice and then the following night I got to do I remember it like it was yesterday yay and those jokes would have gone to waste if I hadn't had a couple hundred people paying to let me uh let me air them and get it off, I was very pleased. How are you doing? I'm good. Did you hear about the experience that I had in Manchester? No. Okay.

So for Makeaway Takeaway, we were filming a block for a week. You were gone for a whole week. I remember this. Yeah, we were in Manchester. We were filming in this big house. Yeah. They hired a house for a week. You were gone for a whole week. I remember this. Yeah, we were in Manchester. We were filming in this big house. Yeah. They hired a house for the week. Yeah.

And I say Manchester. It was outside. It was like sort of rural-ish. They need someone to legally stay in the house overnight because they leave all the camera equipment and everything there. For insurance purposes. Yeah. Yeah.

And last year I did it. Had a lovely time. You know, wake up to birds and everything. There was a deer in the garden once and it's a big garden too. I just felt like a fancy. You can live the life. You can like be living on the rural estate for a week. Yeah, I felt rich.

As lady of the manor. It was very, very privileged. I was very happy and I had a writing deadline coming up. So I was like, great, I'll do it again. I'll stay in the house. And one night we'd finished filming and everything. I reckon it was about maybe 11 or something. And I'm writing the third Horror Heights book I'm working on.

You are writing horror in your spare time. I am writing horror. And it's a book about a girl who her phone is haunted and there's a terrifying old lady that keeps showing up and appearing. But also her bedroom is in an attic, so she keeps hearing like creaking noises and stuff. And as I'm typing, I hear a knock at the door and I go and check it out and it's a sound guy.

So I went and did whatever he needed to do and left. I was like, oh, okay. Then we get to about like 11, sort of midnight-ish. And I heard someone walking around downstairs and my first thought was oh the sound guys sound guys back sound guys back and so i just went hi and like called out and the house was hello and then the footsteps stopped and i was expecting someone to go oh yeah it's just me yeah yeah and there wasn't anything i was like hello okay that's terrifying that's terrifying so i went out to the landing and it's one of those landings that sort of wraps around so it's like a well right it's just yeah what a

waste of space personally like you'd like an atrium i guess i want to say mezzanine oh yeah i'll give you yeah it's like a mezzanine that wraps around us a void uh but yeah there's no one there i called out some more times and so i ended up going on to twitter where all my friends are and saying to everyone look i'm i'm gonna investigate heading down investigate make sure that there's no one in the house but i'll film it and i was sort of saying that as well because i thought if i say it aloud like as i'm going around like as i'm filming if there is someone in the house they know i'm filming and they might be like oh i won't attack this uh rumble this woman yeah yeah maybe they'll just go quietly or try and run away or something that was my

genuine thought the thing is i never i don't i'm i'm actually quite skeptical it's why i like horror and everything because i i think it's scary to to think that you can't explain something but i tend to be able to explain most things and so my biggest fear was that there was someone coming in to steal the camera equipment that was my biggest fear it's literally your job yeah and there's like signs everywhere you know those uh location signs they have the little like fluorescent yellow or orange how to get to the set yeah because we have to have people coming in and yeah every day so expensive things this way yeah basically yeah signs are going off the main road. Expensive things, yeah. Here's all the expensive things.

So I was like, oh, no, someone's come to steal the stuff and I haven't thought this through. Yeah. Because I'm all brave when I'm pretty sure no one's going to rob us. All that privilege comes with some responsibility. So, oh, and I did actually, I will say I did actually end up calling the crew and stuff as well and they offered to come around or call police and stuff. But I was like, do you know what?

I reckon it's more likely weird house sounds or props falling over, something like that. I just want to find out what it is. Yeah. Do a first pass. If you don't hear from me. Yeah. And then I was like, if there is definitely someone here,

then I'll be in touch. Yeah. Did a full pass at the house, couldn't find anyone, and then realised that the front door was, there was two doors. There's like the door that I could see was closed, but the one that goes out to the outside world was open. And I was like, oh, the sound guy has left, not shut the door properly.

The wind has been blowing it because it's windy outside. It's been knocking it around. Okay. That's probably what it was. So I locked the door. I said to my friend, oh, I think I found it. This is the problem. And he said, well, you know, if there is someone in the house,

you've just locked them in the house. No, that's not helping. Now they can't get out now the only way they can get out is by taking the keys yeah and i was like but i don't want to leave the keys you know and i think that was just playing on my mind because as i came around the corner there is a room directly opposite the room i was coming out of a dark room oh my oh and i. And I saw a foot take a step back from the doorway as if someone saw me coming around the corner, took a step back. And I said a lot of words, which I won't repeat.

Oh, yes. Yeah. And then I just yelled out, I'm calling the police. I've seen enough films. I put my head in there. I'm getting a hand over the head with a baseball bat. Yep, or a vase. More likely a vase, actually, in Britain.

So I started calling the police and then I saw the foot starts to come out again and I was like, sugar. Where am I? I was like trying to quickly dial and then my eyes adjusted and I realised that it was a mouse. A what? A mouse? Yeah.

But it was pretty, like it wasn't a teeny tiny mouse. It was big enough that it did look like the end of like a brown shoe. You got Stuart Littled. I did get Stuart Littled. And I realised this is just two separate things that my brain just assumed were related. Yeah.

Because the creaky door, that was definitely sounded like human footsteps. It was heavy. So no mouse is making that noise. No, but a mouse does look. Happening to see a mouse. My brain never thought, oh, I bet it was a mouse because my brain is still thinking, what if there is a human inside the house?

That's terrifying. Oh, by the way, book two, Horror Heights comes out April 28th. Our first problem comes from Simon. This is for you, Matt. Simon would like to know how many molehills would you need to make a mountain out of them? It's great. I can't believe I've never thought of this before.

No. Because everyone says don't make a mountain out of a molehill. Yeah, you're right. And this is what if you had enough molehills to be a mountain? You could. You could, exactly. In which case you should be worried. Yeah, because I guess don't make a mountain out of a molehill is,

it's almost like saying you can't. Yeah. Or you shouldn't. It's like. Don't treat a molehill like it's a mountain. If you hear a single creepy footstep at night, you don't want to make a whole mountain out of that. No.

But enough of them. Enough of them. It's worth making a mountain. Yeah. So the question is, you got some organic engagement. So the question is, how many molehills to the mountain? And I was like, that's such a good problem. Yeah.

So guess what I did? You worked it out. I went and found a molehill. What? yeah so guess what i did you worked it out i went and found a molehill what because so often for these things i'm forever googling how big is an antarctic krill or something right how big is a shrimp how fast is a penguin actually you didn't google that i spoke to the penguin expert exactly so i'm always happiest if i'm not just googling and looking it up yeah so i was like we live in england we have moles yes they make mold well obviously we do have moles yeah yeah never seen one uh there's a local

village green near where i live adorable in the town of hascom i don't think you've been to hascom one time i'll take you there it's like this achingly british there's like a village hall and there's like a big open green expanse and there's a nice local pub not far from there it's a great place for walks and everything i know about it has come will come exactly in fact this trip maybe if we get a chance we'll head over we'll do it yeah but one time at some point we'll do it and i know about it because of my cycling through all sorts of tiny back roads all across Surrey. Yeah.

And I cycled past it. And one day I went, this would be a really good place to walk a dog. And so now we take our dog Skylab there and walk her around. It's nice and quiet. There's a few local dogs that she knows, but she gets to run around in this green. However, we'll be gradually watching the molehills encroach out onto the green, which doubles as a cricket pitch. And there's like a football goals and stuff, right?

When you said which doubles as a cricket pitch, I was like just still thinking animals. Yeah, oh yeah, yeah. And I was like molehills, cricket pitches. Everything. We've seen this deer. We've seen deer there. It's, you know, achingly British. Lucy does not like the molehills.

I mean, she's not going to exterminate the moles. But during winter, they freeze. And I'm wearing pretty decent shoes. Not the moles, the molehills. Right. Oh, okay. I'm wearing pretty decent shoes. Her shoes are a little less.

They don't double as armor. And so she's constantly kicking frozen solid molehills. And she keeps hurting her foot on them. So she's annoyed at these things. She says they're right for kicking them. Yeah. Kicking the kicking the molehole exactly that's where the phrase comes from yes so i when i saw this problem i was like this is great i will just go there with the dog i will measure some molehills and i'll look up how big a mountain is and just divide one into the other we got there this morning all gone cleared the molehills.

Oh, my goodness. They were all gone. They'd mown all the lawn and cleared the molehills ready for, we are recording right on Easter weekend. And so they cleared it all. And I got there for months. These molehills have been everywhere. On the one side of the green, none. Except. They always say that. Measure molehills. Measure molehills. You everywhere on the one side of the green, none. Except.

They always say that. Measure molehills. Measure molehills. You never know when they'll go. It's like that. A mole in the hill is worth two on the mountain. Put up a parking lot. It's that, but with molehills.

It's exactly like that. You don't know what you've got. I don't know the rest of the lyrics. But the thing is, the council had demold demold hilled i can guarantee there's a minimum of one mole because once i walked over from from a distance i could see they were gone as i got closer there was a single mole hill that had been pushed up overnight i hope that that's the one that did all the others just a single single mole working around the clock. And he's like, good riddance.

Yeah, can't believe you. He's like the king of the mole hill now. Not king of the mountain. Everyone else is, but yeah, not king of the mountain. Yes, there was one mole hill. So I measured it. And it was 38 centimeters in diameter at the base. and it was 38 centimeters in diameter at the base.

And it's like we would call it a frustum in maths. It's like the base of a cone. Yeah, like those ones that they use in PE that are like not the full plastic cones. Just the base of the cone. Yeah. You could probably like put a soccer ball or a football on top and it wouldn't roll away. Yeah, exactly like that. Yeah.

So it starts with the diameter, like the base is a circle of 38 centimeters across. It's then 13 centimeters high and it kind of has a plateau, which was about 23 centimeters. Like a little volcano. Yeah, like a little volcano, but we're kind of,

we're kind of solid. And so actually, you know what, I'll show you, we'll, we'll put a photo out on social media. There's the mole hill with both measuring tape and dog for scale. It does look like you've just dumped a bunch of dirt.

It does. It just literally looks like a pile of dirt on the ground, doesn't it? Like here's all the, there it is, in the middle of the green. It's quite pretty actually. I got all the measurements. I worked out its volume. It is just shy of 10 liters oh yeah it's 0.00969 cubic meters so about 10 liters of dirt that's your standard issue

model hill now a mountain uh i was i didn't go measure a mountain i just looked it up and apparently it's got to be 1,000 feet high. Okay. So, yeah. Is that the cutoff for when it goes from hill to mountain? Hill to mountain, 1,000 foot. Or 304.8 meters. And I'm like 165 centimeters. That's like 5'5", I think.

Yeah. So, 5'5", 5'6", something like that. You would need about 200 becks. To make a mountain okay um so um the question now is how wide is this mountain but specifically like most mountains are rock but specifically this is a mountain made out of molehills. So it's all the dirt from the molehills. I assume you're moving it somewhere because like in terms of making a molehill, the dirt's just come from underneath and it's pushed up. Yeah.

That's a terrible way to make a mountain. Yeah. The foundation is like. It would just collapse in on itself eventually. You're taking a mountain's worth of dirt and moving it up and hoping it stays there. That's not going to work. So I'm assuming you're getting a number of molehills and piling them all up into a mountain.

But now you've got to work out how wide will the pile get for it to be able to be 100. Hey, I know this problem. Yeah, it'll be 1,000 foot tall. This is Ferrero Rocher all over again. It's not far. No, I'm assuming. I know the trick.

We've got to get a polystyrene cone and we're going to stick the molehills to the outside. Have you ever seen a mountain in an advertising commercial?

That's how it's done. That's how it's done. Styrofoam core. Stuck molehills to a styrofoam core. Yes. So the problem now is if you start piling up dirt, eventually it'll kind of slump down and you pile more up and it slumps down.

Yeah. And the angle that naturally forms is called the angle of repose. And that varies substance to substance. So sand would slump more than like sticky mud would or something else. So like with an hourglassglass that moment where it all slides exactly that yeah so it builds up slides builds up slides and so i had to look up what the angle is and it's not what you get in the molehill because one solution would be just scale up the molehill and if i if i just do the height of a mountain divided by 13 centimeters it's oh my goodness 2345 times bigger not right wow that's

just height so like we do the cube for the volume so that comes out just over 12 billion but that's not how it works because the mole hill isn't big enough to slump. And I calculated the angle on the side of the molehill and it's about 60 degrees. And you never get dirt staying on an angle of 60 degrees if you keep piling it on. It's only because the molehill is too small to slump that you get this quite sharp edge. You never get, I looked this up from what I can see online, you never get dirt with more than a 45 degree angle if it's just being piled up and slumping. That's like the maximum. So this is just because it wasn't big enough to slump.

But a mountain's going to slump. Yeah. So now I worked out if you had the maximum angle at 45 degrees. Yeah. So you're basically, your radius of the base is the same as the height. I then worked out the volume of that. Then I divided in the volume of a single molehill. So assuming optimal slumpage, so you'd have to put them

in carefully to minimize it all. So how wide is this mountain? It would be just over 600 meters from side to side. Oh, that's not too bad. Not too bad. Yeah. 45 degree angle. The biggest mountain in the solar system

is olympus mons on mars and i thought i'd just run the numbers on that and it has an angle of repose of under five degrees wow so it's super super shallow because it's just been set on mars for ages right yeah so it's pretty much flat so it's i mean it's huge it set on Mars for ages, right? Yeah. So it's pretty much flat. So it's, I mean, it's huge. It is 25,000 meters high, but it's over 600 kilometers, like 600,000 meters wide. It's not a mountain, is it? It's just a big bulge. It's a very big bulge. It's just a big hill, in my opinion.

So, I mean, so, and you're a- And I am a hill. I am a, yeah. So this is the ultimate packing so ultimate packing based off the single mole hill i measured which is now the canonical well it's not a cone is it the the non-cone canonical mole hill and it's three billion well i got specifically three billion060,370,873 molehills. I'm prepared to admit there's probably some rounding.

You shouldn't justify the level of precision. And that's smaller than the number we got from just scaling it up because we didn't need those super sharp – because scaling it up, I'm assuming, is to get that massive plateau at the top. Yeah. And so that scaled right back. Whereas in this case, it's 45-degree assuming, is to get that massive plateau at the top. Yeah. And so that's scaled right back. Whereas in this case, it's 45 degree slope straight up to a point. Three billion molehills per mountain.

Yeah. And you're basically just taking the dirt from a molehill and sticking it in there, aren't you? I'm not factoring in. It's technically not a molehill anymore. Oh. The moment you move it, does it cease to be a molehill? Because it's just dirt. Yeah. Oh, it's rep move it, does it cease to be a molehill? Because it's just dirt. Yeah.

Oh, it's repurposed molehill. Yeah, I'll take that. Yeah, you're good. Yeah. And I've not factored in anything else because people are like, yeah, but the dirt at the bottom would be compressed. And I'm just assuming the density stays the same. So we now know that while you cannot make a mountain out of a molehill, you can make one three billionth of a mountain out of a molehill.

So there's our molehill to mountain conversion ratio. I like that. Yeah. That's a good one. Well, I think, I mean. I mean, you can't argue with that. Well, I can't argue with that. Well, I can't argue with that, Matt. You can't.

And as a hill, I approve of all of that. You are uniquely qualified. That all makes sense. There you go. Personally, I'm going to give that a ding. Thank you. Beck, we have a problem directed specifically at you from Marcus Petri, Like the Dish.

I assume that's their whole name. That's what they wrote. And they actually say this is directed to Beck as I don't think math can solve it. I hope that they definitely say math or Matt. They definitely said math for a second, I thought. But I don't think Matt can solve it, to be fair. It's largely synonymous at this point in time.

But they capitalized math. So I feel like maybe they think my name is Matt. I don't know. They've also spelled my name like the singer. Oh, they have. You got a bonus K. Yeah. This is directed to Beck K, as I don't think math can solve it Beck oh there's another one they're consistent

so maybe it's Matt H Matt H the problem is how can one make friends after adulthood they're saying it's so weird not being able to just like hang out and talk about bands and music and funny things now isn't that everything serious so they want to know how can one make new friends and not just new adult acquaintances? Yeah. Well, I guess the first thing I would say is obviously everyone is wired differently. So I'd find it relatively easy to make friends. I mean, I get anxious. You have a lot of friends. Yeah. Do you know what, though?

I think it's because I don't have an acquaintance setting. Oh, right. That's a good point. That's a good point. If I meet you and we exchange names, we are friends. Friend time. Sometimes I don't even get your name, and it won't be for several times that we meet until I say,

oh, I never got your name. Names are arbitrary anyway. So, yeah, I do tend to, I think that might be one thing to bear in mind. Well, this is why you were a very useful acquaintance at like the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. So I hang out with you. Oh, yeah. Just a constant stream of people are like, oh, hey, Beck,

and say hi and hang out. You're like the gateway to a whole social network. Yeah, I'm that with social network. You're that with like actual fans. Like you'll get stopped by people that you've never met before who know who you are and excited to meet you. I will get stopped by people who I had a drink with four years ago and still occasionally text and go, oh, how's your dog?

That's an actual example. Okay, yeah. So, I mean, because my advice would be just force yourself on people, but not physically. That's terrible advice. I just, you know, what I tend to do is I go in with the expectation we are going to be friends and you'll find that most people will not resist that. And if they do, then you just leave it because you know what?

There's loads of other people. There's plenty of other humans on the land. Are we technically work friends? Like what's our origin story? Well, we met at Green Man Festival. We did. Yes. At work. Yeah, and that was uh briefly

because i was gigging there with the wonderful kent valentine yes good old kent yep and i think he introduced us and helen arnie i already knew thing we did we do the radio thing together we did do a radio thing together yeah and here we are now yeah still doing still still talking into microphones in the same room i feel like that there was a weird gap where it was like we briefly sort of knew who each other were yeah and then it was suddenly yeah but i don't know if this is this is an australian thing but because we got on well and we started working together well i guess we're friends now well i do you know what it was because we wanted to hang out more yeah you were like let's do a podcast to justify a podcast and for about two years monetizing

our hanging out we kept meeting up to talk about the podcast yeah and then just had drinks drinks and i'm like we should probably do this we should probably yeah yeah so i don't know i don't know if there's any transferable advice yeah i so okay so my advice um i mean these are genuinely these are things that i try and follow as well one of them is when you meet someone and they tell you their name yep repeat the name back to them when you're talking to them and then try and say it a couple of times because one issue i tend to have is yeah i don't remember people's names and I I really like it when people remember mine and so I I want to respect people in a similar way so that is something that I've been working on getting better at so that helps I know it's just a little thing that's a little thing

uh and I suppose just in terms of uh meeting people and social stuff I think it is about putting yourself out there I made a lot more friends when I started doing more things on my own and getting more confident that that was okay and talking to people. Yeah. It's 100% when you move somewhere new, signing up for clubs and sports activities and things, you know. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

You know what's a really good place to make friends? An improv course yeah because it is full of people who are looking for more confidence to say yes and i've still got friends from doing comedy courses yeah yeah yeah so it's not the pub that's not where you go to maybe if there's a quiz night on something where it's an activity like a quiz night is almost like you don't just go there and meet people and say can can I be in your team? Yeah, that's true. You need to. Take people to that. Yeah.

That's a real, real point. I would say that making friends is that there's a lot of it is about being proactive as well, which is a scary thing. It's really scary. I've got a friend and a member of my family who both live in Adelaide and they keep saying, oh, we'll meet up. Like they meet up whenever I'm in town yeah but never otherwise but they're always saying oh we should we should talk but neither of them are the type of people who are comfortable reaching out yeah yeah in the very similar vein the way i get friends is to steal them they're more often than not a friend of a friend that's true and then we're like let's just cut out the middle person here yeah maybe you

should try that, Marcus. Yeah. I mean, it's worked a treat for me. Go around stealing friends. But it does require, it's like that situation, it does then require one of the two parties saying,

hey, let's meet up or let's do a thing or, you know, yeah, you need to actively then provide a nucleation point. Yeah. I think common interest groups are really good. In fact, I've got a lot of friends who I met through online things back in the day of forums.

And even today, I've met people from Twitter. Yeah, but making plans and sticking to them, you know, takes work. But, you know, we're social creatures and it's important. Yeah. is and it's important yeah i think my one piece of advice would be find a common interest and see if you like find something that makes you passionate something that you enjoy talking about and then see if you can find a group that is dedicated to it because it'll be full of people who are in the exact same position as you that's good pragmatic advice yeah and then you've got something to keep you all together yeah you don't have to rely on chemistry to get along there's always something to talk about

unless you're really into chemistry then that's a great idea yes join a titration club that is a poster right there there you go well marcus let us know if that if you can give that a dinglet or anyone else if that's helped or do you what? That advice is very specific for you and me. Yeah. There might be other people out there who have different advice. Yeah. And there might be other people out there who need advice. So I think let's start a hashtag.

Okay. Well, so people can just tweet at us their advice for making friends. They could tweet at us, but I think if you use the hashtag and that way anyone who needs to see the answer can find it. It doesn't have to be advice. It could just be how did you meet your friends? Yeah, yeah. So hashtag friending. Friending.

Friending with two Ds. So not like friending. Friending. Friend-ing. Yeah, friend-ing. Friending with two Ds. Yeah. Got it. Hashtag friending friend ding yeah friend ding friending with two d's yeah got it hashtag friending a to the other b to the isness is that the new theme song for a or b yeah i love it i love it i'm on board it is any other Matt, do you have any other business? Any other business is like the biscuit crumbs in the bottom of the biscuit barrel.

This is the part of the podcast where you metaphorically lick your finger and dip it across the plate. Exactly, yeah. Any other biscuit analogies? That's what it stands for. I have a correction. I said a number wrong. When I was talking about the lottery, this was the long lead up to talking about genes.

I did this whole lottery example. And a mathematician who's also a friend of mine, Peter Rowlett, went through it and double checked all my working out. Amazing. I just want to say how great that is. Do you mean Peter Rowella as in mathematical objects? Correct. Yeah.

So we recommend their podcast. The podcast we mentioned, yeah. And they correct us. Exactly. Thanks, Peter. So I guess if you like facts, go listen to their podcast. Yeah, if you like things that are correct. But they said they're always on the lookout for neat combinatorics to use in their lectures.

And so when they heard me talk about the lottery, they're like, oh, that's interesting. They've not looked at it that way before. So they sat down, did all the working out. When I was talking about discounting every lottery ticket that's picked the number seven in it, I said, just off-housed it, which is a lot, over half a million. And they're like, that doesn't sound right. And they went and checked. And it's actually

four and a half million tickets. I would be discounting in that scenario. And I realized, I went back and looked at my spreadsheet. I read the wrong cell. So I looked over and I read the number for all the tickets that had all odd numbers, which is just over half a million. In fact, the ones that have a seven on them, not the digit, the number is four and a half million. So I just read the wrong number. Everything else around that was correct. All my other numbers and conclusions and everything else spot on. I just literally read out the wrong number, but my working out was correct. And for the record, four and a half million is over half a million. You can argue about whether it's just over,

but it's definitely over. And compared to all numbers, it's only just over half a million. Because numbers get pretty big. Forever. Yeah, exactly. So it's only just, it's just, yeah. I think I was only just,

just over the correct answer. So there you are. I'm sorry I read the wrong number, but I'm glad our eagle-eyed listeners were able to spot that. It's funny you should say that because we had a lot of people write in to say that we offhandedly said, oh, well, I should hope that there's no bacteria in any food. Oh, my goodness.

In episode 031. And what I would like everyone to know is that immediately after we said that, we then went, oh, well, actually, except for the good bacteria, there's a lot of food with good bacteria. But because Matt and I have a tendency to ramble. Oh, my goodness. Our wonderful producer. These recordings are hours long.

Lauren Armstrong Carter has to cut them down. And that little bit of us saying, oh, but not all food. Yeah, that went. That went. So we had covered that. It's just there wasn't time to keep going into it because Matt and I ramble. So as a general rule, either we're wrong, like Matt was with the maths. Whoa.

Maybe just afterwards I said, oh, no, wait, this other number. And then Lauren took that out of the edit. I think if you don't hear it, it's Lauren's fault. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. That's the next rule. If you don't like something, it's Lauren's fault.

Lauren. What's the chance she leaves this in the episode? Well, you're the maths guy. There is another bit of any other business. The podcast, speaking of podcasts. Yep. Dream Factory. Dream Factory. We're re-promoting all the same podcasts. We are. They're still good. So that's the

podcast where two lovely gentlemen come up with what they think films are based on silly pun titles that people have sent them. Yeah. And I said to you, Matt, come up with a pun title. did and then you said fast and spurious correct as as in the edit yeah and they were very impressed by that yeah

and i found that very amusing because what had actually happened as i said come up with a fun title and then we sat here for quite some time. Yeah, because I did a bunch that were callbacks to the episode. Yes. And you're like, no, no, no, it's got to be a standalone one. It won't make sense. And I'm like, I can't even think of movies now. And then we did Fast and the Furious. To be fair, the Fast and the Furious is like my go-to comedy film franchise.

You know what mine is? What's yours? Dustin Checks In. What? Dustin Checks In. Oh, sorry. comedy film franchise you know what mine is what's yours dustin checks in what dustin checks in oh sorry no dustin checks it would be my pun one actually that would be that'd be dustin hoffman checking into a hotel it's dunstan checks in that always makes me think of it dunstan checks in is a 90 like kids family film about an orangutan that checks into a hotel we go for different levels of niche i go for one of the biggest movie franchises ever that everyone's heard about i know i bet you're like remember that movie from the 90s when an orangutan checks into a hotel

hey you you who's listening to this i know I know you know exactly what film I'm talking about. No, you don't. And you are nodding. No, don't humor, Beck. We'll do a poll. All right, we're doing a poll. Fine, do it. Have you heard of Dunstan Shakespeare? I have not heard of Dunstan.

Before this episode. I don't think it's even a real film. Yes or no. We'll put it on Twitter. Find it on Twitter. Vote on the poll. No cheating. We'll put a movie poster on the Instagram.

No, we won't. Yes, we will. I've got a fact about that as well. The orangutan was played by a female orangutan. Oh, there you go. Even though they're referred to them as Dunstan and a hymn. That's because the female orangutan is less aggressive. Facts.

Wise. Good fact. Anyway. Anyway. That's my comment. Anyway. What I was going to say is anyway you want you went to faster see you went to faster the spirits it sounded like you went to it so quickly

i went to a pun title so quickly i did it before the actual title with dustin checks in oh that's true yeah yeah you can't help it pun it's it's reflex so i'd like the record to state beck was quick with puns And sometimes the edit Taketh And sometimes the edit giveth But it all balances out Does all balance out What we're trying to say is

Don't leave us Lauren And now to thank All of you for listening Thank you all For giving us lovely reviews On Apple Podcasts. Oh my gosh, that is very helpful. Please keep doing that.

If anything, thanks for telling people about who we are. And especially, thank you to our Patreon listeners. You're all the best. Because you help, well, you're the reason we can continue to do this. And pay for our wonderful producer. And we do, uh so uh we have a tradition where we pick three names at random yes at the end to thank from our patreon supporters and joshua miller here has written in and said are the three names chosen at random at the end

of an episode actually random or are they randomly drawn from the set of names not yet chosen? And I will say they are completely random. Yeah. I get the complete list of all supporters afresh every time, sort them all randomly and take the top three names, which this episode are Kim Larson, Freeman Stephenson and Ira Sambor. Thank you all so much. Yay. And remember, if you sign up to Patreon, you can set your own amount

and you get our bonus show, which has absolutely nothing factual in it. No, none of the slightest. I'm a wizard. Oh, that's great though. Where Matt and I just muck about and pretend we're wizards. You know, I've just realized, Bec, I didn't bring my cards in from home. Tell you what, if you do the credits, I reckon I can find a deck. You literally just have a pack there. Oh, but I won't be able to do my system. A Problem Squared was brought to you by Matt Parker, myself, Bec Hill, and Lauren Armstrong Carter.

And Beck, was this your card? No. To be fair, I was back to square one. I tell you what, though, I'm pretty sure that was one of the group. That was my best guess. I thought we had narrowed it down. Nuts. Oh, well.

I need to remember that one now.