A Problem Squared - 046 = Novel Novel Hovels and A Lot o' Lotto Pottos

Episode Date: November 7, 2022

In THIS episode...   * What is the most interesting way to store books? * How many years would you need to play the lottery to reach a net positive?  * A-to-the-O-to-the-B   If you want to listen to Bec’s BBC podcast, 'Elon Musk vs Twitter' you can do that here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/brand/p0d7q0h8   Check out the cool people Bec and Matt played pool with: ‘Average Pool Player’ Rollie Williams: https://www.youtube.com/user/RollieWilliams   Jennifer Baretta. Here’s Rollie + Jennifer together! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C40fkp0ReDc&ab_channel=KAMUIBRAND   Grant Sanderson, of Three Blue One Brown fame: https://www.3blue1brown.com/https://www.youtube.com/c/3blue1brown   And if you want to watch Matt destroying one of his own books, you can do that here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S26_O2B8h8k    Don't forget, you can get your merch here: https://a-problem-squared.teemill.com.   As always, if you've got a problem or a solution, hit us up on our website aproblemsquared.com. And if you want want even more from A Problem Squared, find us on Twitter and Instagram.

Welcome to A Problem Squared, the problem-solving podcast where people send in their problems, we try and solve them, and I would say we are always on point. You occasionally get double or triple the value you were expecting and even when we veer off course it's still pretty exciting darts darts themed intro oh thank you nice thank you do you want to hear the three i rejected yes uh people often enjoy the podcast while drinking beer yeah the main event is surrounded by a bunch of numbers okay yep and uh occasionally things get dinged oh nice yeah when you hit the wrong thing i didn't format those properly that was there mine would be

it can sometimes be a sharp jab in the ring as in like a pain in the butt wow wow well i was gonna say it's a podcast of two players be Bec Hale, comedian, TV presenter, very sharp, occasionally decorated with feathers. Okay. Are you referring to my flights? Well, yes, yes. And I'm almost certain at some point you've had feathers. Darts don't have feathers.

Arrows do. Well, darts have feathers on the back. What do they got on the back of them? No, not called Fletchers, are they? Fletcher is someone who makes arrows. So I think maybe they're called a flight on an arrow as well. But they're supposed to be on a dart. They've got the bits in the back. What do they got on the back of them? No, not called Fletchers, are they? Fletcher is someone who makes arrows. So I think maybe they're called a flight on an arrow as well. But they're supposed to be on a dart. They've got the bits in the back.

Well, they're plastic. I don't know if darts had feathers in the same way that... Like on the podcast that causes more problems than songs. Yeah, exactly. We're halfway through the intro. We've already caused our own problem. And I'm Matt Parker, mathematician, author, and a surprising amount of arithmetic

for something that's advertised as fun and entertaining. Nice. Thank you. Good. I like that. Bullseye. On this episode... I'll be looking at different ways to shelve books.

I've comprehensively run the numbers on the German lottery. And we've got a lot of any other business. Including the fact that producer Lauren has just found out Darts used to be made with turkey feathers Yes, in the 19th century There you go, just like you Alright, back where, back in the UK And how are you doing?

I'm good I've been very busy You have been busy Yeah I'm doing a bunch of stuff. Yeah, you flew home two days after we recorded the USA episode. Yes. That was fun, by the way.

That was a lot of fun. I enjoyed that. Yeah. And also, I want to give a shout out to the people who came to an evening of Unnecessary Detail in New York who were a Problem Squared fan. Yes. It was very nice to meet a bunch of you. Thank you for coming along.

Yeah. We had a couple of ding shirts in the audience which is nice and there was a couple who had listened to all of the episodes so then they signed up to patreon so they could listen to all the i'm a wizard ones while they were driving to new york so thanks thanks for saying hi that was lovely it was nice to meet a bunch of you so that that was really cool. Yeah, we had a great time. We had a good time. We played a lot of darts. Oh, my goodness. So Matt was filming a video for his YouTubes.

And in the place where... I don't want to give away what the video is. Oh, no, we can do that. Oh, we can do that. For listeners who aren't familiar with this, I make a lot of YouTube videos about mathematics. Yeah. And there's a guy called Rolly Williams

who has one channel about playing pool. His brand is The Average Pool Player. And he tries to recreate famous shots in pool to see how long it takes an average player to do what the pros do on the first go. He's also got a climate change channel called Climate Town, which is very good. Yes, yeah, it is. But I was filming a math, because we're in the States, a math of pool video at Skyline Bar and Billiards. I think that's the official name. It's in Brooklyn.

Billiards Bar. It's a very cool bar. If you're there, go play some pool. But you did not play pool. No, because you guys were filming. And then there was a lot of other people, you know, practicing their pool. It's a pool hall. Yeah.

So, but there was a darts board. There was. No one was a darts board there was no one was playing darts so i was like oh i'll just i'll just brush up on some of my dart skills while you guys play pool and uh got into my one of my uh hyper focus you did you did modes and for two and a half hours a little way in i was like i wonder what beck's up to i was like so you're playing darts i'm like oh that'll entertain non-stop didn't eat didn't go to the toilet just throwing darts collecting them throwing them again but managed to improve my stance got like much better at my aim i got quite a few bullseyes actually over the two and a half hours you couldn't even celebrate loudly because we were filming no oh yeah and it

was a bit oh my gosh oh right this we will put it on socials you took a photo i took a photo and a little video where you guys were filming like you were doing a little talky bit where you're going over the maths yep and um you were chatting and i'd already gotten a dart in the center bullseye and i was using up like my final dart and then I got one in the back of the dart yeah I was so close to going oh and then I knew that I couldn't we did play darts with you afterwards once we'd wrapped yeah I know after two and a half hours of that yeah we were then like okay let's play some darts I thought you're gonna hustle us I did okay you did good you did good I came second oh really yeah well in that we stopped after you won.

Oh, right. But I was just behind you. Right behind. Yeah. And to make the full picture, it was yourself, myself, Grant Sanderson from the 3Blue1Brown YouTube channel. Yes. Who has done a video about darts on the Numberphile channel.

Just to link it all together. And Roly. And Roly. And Jen. And Jen. Who was the professional she's so good at pool so good just ridiculous yeah jennifer barretta people want to look her up incredible pool player yeah just sit sit like a challenging shot up on the table and be like

you're gonna bounce the ball off this cushion off that cushion hit another ball in the pocket and she'll just do it oh and i also since i got back i've uh got another podcast it's only five episodes though so you don't have to stress matt it's okay but i've made i've made peace with um it's on bbc sounds it's already out it's called elon musk versus twitter yeah it's all about the elon musk you know interestingly by the time this episode comes out i there might be more episodes coming out depending on the outcome of what's happening because like he was going to buy twitter and then he wasn't and then they were going to go to court but then he said he was going to buy it and then they canceled the court case oh my gosh so much drama so i'm excited to know by the time this comes out

if we know what's happened what about you matt oh my goodness well uh we both left new york at the same time i stayed in the states i drove around with alex who holds the camera and does editing and we filmed two videos in new york we filmed an additional four videos across multiple states and on the very last night when we were halfway through the final video because we filmed the last video in two locations in Florida. We were staying in Tallahassee. And like the final day we had to get up, drive three hours to Orlando, film the final shots, and then get to the airport in time for like a 5 p.m. flight. It was ridiculous. So it was manic.

But on the last night, we found a bar in Tallahassee that did food and had a dartboard. And so we ended the trip the way it kind of started. Did you both use the stance that I taught you? We did. I absolutely used the stance that you taught. And I was excited because you were throwing the way that I was throwing when I started. And I looked up dangerous the correct stance and and practiced that enhanced my game instantly it took me ages to do it whereas

i was like oh you're supposed to stand like this but you know it might be weird and then you were like bam straight you'd be you that's because you you put the hard work in honing honing you could convey all that experience to me in a sentence or two. Yeah. We played pool first. We like recreated the evening. And then once we finished playing pool, we then played darts. Traditional order. Except it wasn't your standard dartboard. It was a modern electronic one.

Oh, yeah. That would do the arithmetic for you. Initially, I was like, oh, I quite enjoy doing the calculations. Yeah. Doing the arithmetic. But actually, you know, after a while, I was like, oh, my God, this is great. Because I just done like, what, two weeks straight of math videos and math and all sorts of stuff. And to actually have an evening off just throwing pointy things at a board.

Yeah. And then not having to do any adding up. It's an unfamiliar sensation, but I was quite happy not doing any maths. So, there we are. So, we ended the trip where we started playing pool playing darts one thing i do have to quickly add is that grant sanderson yep from 3w1 brown yeah very good maths youtube channel for people who aren't familiar yeah there was a wonderful moment when we were playing darts when he you know pretended to be annoyed that he wasn't winning he wasn't winning yeah which he wasn't he's delightful but he was like. He's delightful. But he was like, oh, this game is stupid.

And then he threw the dart from where we were sitting, which was like quite a- It was like a table with the food and drinks. Quite far away from the board. It was like one and a half times the regulation line. Yeah. And then he like went, oh, and like threw it really hard and hit the connection point that connected the light that was lighting up the dartboard. Like on this little wire. And so it just went poof. And the light went out. Didn't dartboard, like on this little wire.

And so it just went poof and the light went out. Didn't break it. It was like a plug. It disconnected the lights safely. And it wasn't like a huge, it's not a small bit. And obviously he didn't mean to hit it, but it looked awesome. It was very funny. He threw it and the whole dartboard went dark.

It was like, dart's stupid. And then just turned off the light with a dart. Turned it off from across the room. Yeah. If he then thrown another dart right across the bar and turned off the light with a dart. Turned it off from across the room. Yeah. If you then throw in another dart right across the bar and turn off the main lights. I like to think that's how he turns off all lights now. Exactly.

Just throws darts. He goes through so many light bulbs. Our first problem, Bec, comes from Sarah, who went to the problem posing page at a problemsquared.com and says, Bec, oh, they've already pre-selected who they want to solve their problem. Oh, now you know how it feels. When I scroll, genuinely, when I scroll through all the problems

that we've been sent, I basically look for, if they are addressed Matt, which a lot of them are you like i'm like yeah this is this is not for me yeah and and rightfully so they they usually are not things that i could answer not my specialty sarah says beck bookshelves are kind of boring what creative and different ways can i store my books? They then point out they already sort their books by type and then genre, not theme, and then series. And they then say, sorry, Matt, not alphabetically. I don't know why they're apologizing for that.

Fine. Thank you, Sarah. They reckon they've got a few hundred books. Roughly, they've not counted them exactly. And they're currently all in neat rows on regular bookshelves. And it's just not fun enough. And so their problem for you, Bec. What is the most interesting way to store books?

Mmm, I love this. I love this problem. Wait, is not type, genre, and theme the same thing? Theme's different to genre, because you could have, like, a bunch of fantasy books, but they explore different themes. Okay. So you don't put, like, all the books that explore the finite nature of existence together right and then all the books which explore the futility of an indifferent universe together yeah cool what about type type fiction or non-fiction that's what font they picture or

oh yeah how do you sort your books matt not by typeface, but now I really want to. All the serifs are on one side. Mine are unordered with the exception of the bookcase in my study that's often in the background when I film. I put all my maths books together. And actually Lucy's physics books are all together, but everything else is no order whatsoever. Now that I know this, I'm going to try and sneak different books onto that bookshelf to be in the background of your videos. That'd be very funny if you can sneak a hilarious book in there.

So it changes each time. You can always tell if I've visited. But the reason I do that is I need to be careful because I buy books for several reasons. One of which I think the title and or cover is hilarious. Yeah. But stripped of that context, there's some weird books in my book collection. Next time you're at my place, you can find the weirdest book

in my collection. All right. And we'll put that in a future episode. Okay, done. What do you do? I'm not one of those people who orders them exactly by size.

Gav orders them by size in his bookshelf. Oh, what, descending? No, he tries to get all of the shelves to be where the books are the equal height as much as possible so you just get this nice nice level line oh that's yeah and it does mean on a couple of shelves he sort of does it symmetrically so if there's a

couple of larger books then he'll have them on the far ends on each side so that sort of evens out in the middle yeah it is quite nice that's something my sister-in-law yeah does it by color spectrum yeah i see there's a lot i've got a lot of friends that do that now because ever since old pinterest and what do you do so i've got a lot of kids books and picture books for um reference i know you're starting to smile but it is like i'm smirking a lot of them are either books from my childhood that are quite inspirational and I still refer to for stuff. Like I've got Goblins by Brian Froud, which is one of my favorites. He was the designer on like Labyrinth.

Yeah, did a lot of Jim Henson stuff. So, and that's a pop-up book, which obviously had a really big impact on me. For those of you who haven't seen me as a a performer as a stand-up i use um flip charts with like pop-up type elements yeah so i've got that and a few other books on pop-up and different things like that because those books usually quite large it's like whatever shelves are large enough to hold them do you ever have to cull your book collection i know that I can be a bit basic. Do you have to color in your books back? You've colored them all in back. Shots fired.

No, I haven't had to color my book collection because I don't have a very big book collection. Oh, wow. Well, my mom is still a librarian. So a lot of the books that I read as a kid were borrowed. That's easy. Yeah. So I don't actually have a massive book collection i have to routinely thin the hood yeah i know your house is

filled with too many too many you've got like bookshelves in your hall like actually like upstairs in the landing yeah now we'll get back to sarah's problem i think this is very interesting i love this problem but if i was posing it it wouldn't be what are different ways to store books it would be how to make bookshelves interesting because you put you put like action figures and stuff on them yeah my bookshelves have got all like it'll be broken up with you know action figures or photos or got a camera so i'll do that but you know i've always wanted to have a door that is a bookshelf oh a secret door yeah i've always wanted to have a secret door so i was thinking about this and i was like right so we're assuming that maybe you don't need

immediate access to them yeah in which case and this is something that i have accidentally done in the past stacking books is a bit like building blocks. Yep. Which means that you could technically store your books in the shape of any type of thing. Yeah, if you can build it. And I've got structural concerns. Like, are the books just free stacked or are they in some kind of... No, free stacked.

Free stacked. But you'd have to have pretty sturdy books. Ah. So, for instance, if you need a chair, you could build a chair out of stacked books. So for instance, if you need a chair, you could build a chair out of stacked books. Really? In fact, some people have already done it. I looked it up. I'm not the only person to have this thought. Some people have done it and they've done it very well. I think that's the most interesting way is to make furniture. Like you could build a bed and then

you put your mattress on top of it. I always want to make a bookcase out of books okay so you'd like stack books and then have a shelf and then stack books and then have a shelf uh and then you put the books on the shelves that'd be very funny you could even somehow reinforce books to become the shelves i like that yeah you could build some really nice accent columns yeah in your house to like frame your your doorways well i don't know if you've spotted this we'll have a look when we get back to my place i've got a tower of books on either side of the doorway to my study i've never noticed that they just start stacking from the ground up they're both maybe waist high oh no yeah i have seen that i do hilariously keep books on the top which have titles that relate to mess oh i've never picked up messy by tim harford on one side yes hot mess by matt winning the other

and so i think it's very funny because my study is frequently a state yeah that's nice so i take it back i i have organized my book placement yeah for comedy purposes the what you went up against here though is people have very strong opinions in different directions on this things that would damage the books because stacking books is not good for them no i did a youtube video ages ago where i was using books copies of my own book as like a test mass to weigh something and to be more accurate i was cutting down to fractions of a book right people in the comments got very upset yeah that i was destroying the idea of yeah but i was destroying one of, many copies of my own book. But those copies are worth something.

You know, like people, I've bought one. I bought mine like an idiot. I know. Could have asked you for one of your many, many free ones. Help yourself. There's several behind you in different languages. Let's just rub that in for the listeners. Yeah.

Yeah. But people, I mean, I think the entertainment value of the video and the educational thing of destroying a book i thought was absolutely worth it i didn't have any qualms doing it but people yeah very very angry yeah and again as the child of a librarian i i get it that said upsetting i would never dog ear like i would never fold over the yeah i wouldn't i couldn't do that i can't write in a book that would make very, like I write like a name or something on the front cover. On the inside cover. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I do that.

Yeah. Do you remember my storage solution idea? No, what was that? I called you up because I was so excited about this idea. Now, listeners. That could be a lot of different occasions. If any listeners could actually help me implement this, then please do get in touch. But I think it's one of those it's one

of those things where i'd have to quit everything that i do and spend 100 of my time building a business hyper focus on this yeah but basically as a renter i know that if i move house or flat or whatever or move back to australia i'm gonna have to pack up everything and so to move bookshelves, you have to take everything out of the bookshelf. And then you move it. What if you made like really useful boxes or other storage, you know, company boxes. Other boxes of different levels of usefulness are available. Yes. And you made them so they were like perfectly shaped as like a bookshelf size. Oh, I do remember this phone call.

So you put all the books in there with the spines so that they're sitting up in the way of a shelf and then stack those. And then when you're moving or something, you've just got a little lid you click on and then you turn it and then you can stack them and stick them in there. Like a flight case for life.

What are these boxes? What are these boxes called? Beck boxes. Beck boxes. So, you know, Sarah, that's once i've got that business going oh really oh a creative way of storing your books organically marketing a non-existent business would be to use my storage boxes wow and do you know what

as one of the options i'll chuck in a storage door a free door yeah that you can like slide open a panel and or like open up a it's not a real door, is it? It looks like a door. It looks like a door, but it's not a real door. But it's just got some books. Yep. Yeah. We'll have that on the website that I have for Box Hill.

I think having side by side a bookcase, it looks like a bookcase, but it is a secret door. It looks like a door, but it is a secret case. I mean, come on, it's so good. You're like, like here follow me to the kitchen exactly what do you think i've answered it i think you have but i think it's going to be down to sarah to ding this one oh i don't i feel like uh i'm too close to the issue i want to hear from sarah and if there's anyone listening who You know You've come up with an

An interesting A creative way Of storing your books Yeah And I mean like You know It has to be something that's That's interesting

It's worth mentioning That people will be fascinated by We get some good suggestions Then Oh no I'd like to see I want to see pictures You want to see pictures

Or diagrams If anyone has any interesting ways Oh okay Or diagrams Yeah I'll accept diagrams Either realised or conceptual Yeah On Twitter At a problem squared send your pictures and diagrams i'm not going to take text responses no i want pictures or pics and diagrams yeah just like my books and in the future mostly pictures we'll do any other bookcases nice All right. Our dinglet slash wing ding.

Yep. Hang on. Mini problem. Is from Pascal. Pascal. Pascal. Pascal. And Pascal says,

Usually lottery maths videos are hung up on the likelihood to win the jackpot and don't go into detail about the chances of smaller consecutive winnings. Oh, yeah. If you were to buy a lottery ticket once a week for 30 years, what are the overall odds of coming out with a net positive and how often would you need to win any of the smaller winnings? Right, yep. Yeah.

And then they say lots of love from Germany. Oh, thanks, Pascal. Yeah. It's a good point. And I've done stuff about the lottery and everyone just talks about the main jackpot of, like in the UK, winning the main lottery prize is like one in 45 million right and actually quite a lot yeah and because pascal says lots of love from germany i looked up the german main lottery

lottery they've got other kind of raffley stuff that happens as well their main prize is one in about 140 million wow it. That's way worse. Yeah. That's like three and a half times worse. So if you live in Germany, buy your lottery tickets in Britain. Yeah. It's up there with like Euro millions, those kind of odds. They're not good odds.

Do you think that's because every now and then the number no comes up? There's no number. No number. Because nine. Yeah. Good work. Thank you. That's my German joke done. We number. Because nine. Nine. Yeah. Good work. Thank you. So.

That's my German joke done. We've all won a prize today. So, I've written. So, what I did was, and I'll talk about it in a second. But first of all, I want to set it running. I've written a German lottery simulator in code. Of course you have. And it will get a bunch of people who will all play the lottery for 30 years

and then return how well they did. So how many people would you like to set playing the lottery here? Oh, well, I mean, how many do you think we need in order for it to do its job properly? Well, that's interesting because the more people you have, the longer it takes. All right. Is this going to be like your word or have you got 32 days no so and someone's like well i can do it in under points it's now under half under half a millisecond now uh i'd love this ridiculous so annoyed okay so okay we'll do a thousand people

that's near instant okay okay all right can we name them all? You can name them all. Yeah. Here we go. Start and run. Okay, done. Spencer. So, the average earning. Keith, again. For all the Keiths and one Joanne was people won back 25.3% of the money they spent on the tickets. Okay.

And of the people who ended up making a profit two and a half percent ah so let's bump it up i know a million takes forever so i'm gonna do a hundred thousand people at once and we'll set that going so what i've done because i've done so much on the uk lottery yeah for pascal i'll get all the stats for the german lottery it's the german lottery you win percentages of the total prize pool for different numbers that match so i found a website that gave the breakdown of both the odds for each possible result and the average winnings people get for that result okay yeah and so i to be honest i didn't do that that math myself i found a website that had done it and I've trusted them.

So there you are. All right. So which is your nice way of saying, look, if it's wrong, it's not my fault. Yeah, basically. Yeah, cool. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And actually what I found very interesting is normally the more unlikely the outcome, the more money you win for it.

So the more common responses. Yeah, that makes sense. You make less money. But the last two are the other way around. So getting three numbers correct in the German lottery is a one in 63 chance. And you win on average 11 euros and 10 euro cent. Okay. It's actually less likely to get two numbers and the super number.

Less likely, but you only get six euros. Huh. And that's because the six euro one is a guaranteed six euros whereas the other one's a percentage payout based on all the other winnings but it's averaged out at more money despite being higher odds wow i thought it was super super intriguing that is interesting yeah so i coded the whole thing up and so people play it 52 times a year for 30 years yeah across and let's have a look are they they still going? They're still running. So 100,000 people are still playing it to get the results. Now in the UK, you can just look up the average return.

What? So currently the UK government hands out the license to run the lottery to a company. Yeah. And actually it's changing. New companies taking it over in 2024. So. As in the government sold that, right? Yeah.

The government has awarded the contract to a different company to run it to run the rights to running a lottery no to run the lottery oh right so the actual doing of the lottery is run by a private company called camelot runner at the moment oh yes yeah and they are allowed to keep one percent of all the money spent on tickets all the people have finished playing the lottery they're allowed to keep one percent of the money as profit yeah they keep four percent of it on running costs okay so that's like five percent of their turnover of which one percent is profit and then they're mandated on how much has to go to charity how much has to go out as prizes and at the moment 53 percent of money people spend on tickets is given back as prizes oh okay so yeah so that's like part it's

actually part of the law is that they have to yeah and then what's what's happening with the changeover what's about to change a new a new company's got the contract to run the lottery r1 are taking over the contract and they can they can change how's that spelt a l l w y n oh so it's almost like all win all win win. Like we all win. We all win. When people are like, we haven't all won. We haven't all won. Very few people win, in fact. It's spelled with a Y. For important legal reasons.

Yeah. It's like Froot Loops. Yes, exactly. So they'll be taking over and they think, at the moment they're saying they're going to reduce the cost of buying tickets and they're going to have more draws, like two draws per night night instead of one maybe that's what they know because then they'll be like oh people will buy tickets for both because you have to so they're going to half the price but double the draws yeah now what i was about to say before is that tells us that on average

for every pound you spend on the lottery you get 53p in winnings yeah and actually pascal's thing if people play it for a long time the longer you play it the more you're going to average out at that 53p return yeah so you might end up half poorer yeah but half of that time has been spent having some lovely fantasies exactly it's permission to do and that's better value than the money you get back sure it's not a good investment but that's a bit skewed because that average that 53 in the uk also includes the jack pots which are incredibly unlikely and now i couldn't find the official regulations for germany i don't speak german but i could run this simulation yeah and this is interesting because this is only a hundred thousand people playing for 30 years each all right how's japan done it's

very unlikely they're going to win the jackpot so this is most people's experience and they got back on average 37.7 percent this time wow i ran a bunch of times it bounces around between 30 and 40 percent you probably so it's still higher than it was originally it was about a quarter yeah yeah yeah almost we only did a thousand people then so we're going to get wide fluctuations but yeah it's it's in that ballpark yeah so i ran the actual expected return on the german lottery with the numbers i found and it came out my calculations based on numbers i found online it was like 49.99 right so i can almost guarantee knowing germany it's exactly 50 percent because that makes logical sense 50 percent's prize 50 percent's. Because that makes logical sense. 50% is prize, 50% is everything else.

Yeah. So that's the long term. But you need to live long enough to win the jackpot to do that. Oh, and again, it came out at only 2.5% of people made a profit over 30 years. So to answer one of Pascal's problems, if you ignore the jackpots, because no one's winning them anyway, and you look at the smaller prizes only two and a half percent of people make money over 30 years yeah everyone else loses money but we forget we forget how much we're spending because it's one euro 20 per ticket people forget how much that adds up yeah and they've ordered the short term like oh making money because they win a couple prizes yeah together but so actually i wrote another bit of

code to actually see how long it would take to win the german lottery so i'm going to run that now here we go so this is this is uh this is you playing the german lottery beck okay just me on my own just you on your own just one person and i'm buying a ticket a week ticket a week starting now ready yeah and go okay so it's now running yeah with you buying one ticket a week and obviously we're not taking into account inflation or anything like that. No, no, no. The ticket's going to stay at 120.

Because I'm doing everything as kind of as ratios. So, everything's in 20, 22 euros. So, we don't have to worry about it escalating up. And so, the idea here is we'll get a sense of how long it would take you to win the jackpot. But it's also keeping track of how many smaller prizes you're winning. Oh, that's nice. So, once you win the jackpot, it'll be able to tell you the accumulative total of everything else you won

and it's tracking how much you're spending on it. This is really cool. They should have this in school. It's good educational. Actually, coding it up was really interesting. So, it's a good little exercise in thinking through the probability and everything and then yeah getting some code to run well you came in this is the code i was writing when you were when i was talking about recording your other your other point i know how rude am i came in and was like i'm gonna use our equipment to record

the other thing yeah your side cast yeah what can i paid me. Oh, we're done. All right. You won the jackpot. Yay. How old am I? Okay. You won the jackpot. Are you going to add it to my age now?

I'm about to turn 36. Okay. Okay. Interesting. You won the jackpot. Let me just... 13 weeks into the year, 4,890,677.

And how old are you now, Bec? I'm 35. 35. Yeah. You will be 4,890,712. And then Rhino Room finally gets a permanent venue. Yep. Now, there's good news.

So, you won the jackpot. And the jackpot you won is just over 12.5 million euros. Because you've won the main prize on the German lottery. It's not a huge amount. Now, along the way, you won a lot of smaller prizes. And they total more. They're just over 77 and a half million. Wow.

That's a big amount more. So you actually made over 90 million euros across all your small prizes and then the big jackpot by the time you won the jackpot. Huh. 90 million euros. Now, bad news. It costs you 305 million euros in tickets. It costs you 305 million euros in tickets. So you made a loss of 214, 215 million euros.

Right. So I'm probably not in a position. You're way in debt. Yeah. I've made about a third of what I lost. Is that right? Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

Just under that. Yeah. Does that work out with the percentage then? You know how you're looking at the percentage of... Oh, yeah. The percentage from before, though, no one was winning the jackpot. But actually, the jackpot is not that big compared to what you win in the smaller prizes. So, actually, shall we just...

I'll very quickly run your numbers. So, there's the $305 million it cost you to play. Here's the $90 million you won. you won so your percentage including the jackpot and actually this would be quite a nice representative answer uh yeah 29.56 about 30 yeah yeah and the other one was like somewhere between 30 and 40 yeah when you ran it with a thousand it was like 24 yeah roughly 25 and then when you ran it with 1,000, it was like 24. Yeah, roughly 25. And then when you ran it with 100,000, it was 30 something. I'll run it again with 10,000 now. 10,000 is running.

Oh, someone must have won the jackpot. Oh. Yeah. Still only 2.5% of people made money. But the average winnings was 1.04. 1.04. Yeah, times the original spend. What're saying is um if your plan if your plan is to make money on the lottery yeah no even and this is interesting pascal's got a very important point

and this is the german lottery this is the german lottery it's very similar to every other lottery like it's just the it's the minor details of the exact numbers but the overall the size of types the probabilities numbers are all the same size of the types, the probabilities, the numbers are all the same. And Pascal's got a very interesting point that we always ignore the smaller prizes, those of us who do videos and podcasts about this maths. And actually, as we saw when you played it for millions of years, you made more money on the smaller prizes than that one jackpot you got

eventually. Yeah. And we use the term made. But even then, you didn't make money. No. Even factoring in, very important, small prizes, still no good. But. You're not going to make money in the lottery.

But hey. Yeah. I'd be millions of chances to dream. Oh, there you are. You did a lot of dreaming. So much dreaming. You're also in a lot of debt. It's now time for AOB

which stands for AOB what have we got this time Beck well we had we had quite the response after your busted oh yeah

yeah I thought I'd left no no stone left unturned on that one, but apparently. Yeah. Well, I mean, my favorite response, a lot of them were people coming up with their own theories and finishing that. My favorite response was someone who was just angry because then they got 3000 stuck in

their head, like the year 3000 stuck in their head for days afterwards. Yeah. For people who missed this episode, I analyzeded the lyrics to the early 2000s song, Year 3000 by Busted. Yes. Do you remember, I was on the phone to you, not that long afterwards, when I just got to the US. You hadn't flown out yet.

I was in Orlando. Yeah. I was going to the Electrical Transmission and Substation Structures Conference. And I was sat, like, I'd listened back to that episode. I was doing some work in my hotel room. And then I heard Year 3000 playing quietly in the background. Oh, yes.

I was like, what? I was like, did I leave the podcast running? And no, it was being played outside the hotel in the pool area. Yeah. Weird. Did I mention on that episode how easily that song melds with Third Eye Blind? Semi-charm kind of life, baby, baby. Honestly, play them together.

Really? Oh. Yeah, and I don't think anyone's mixed it yet. Oh, there's a mash-up waiting to happen. Yeah, if there's any musically inclined people listening, I'd love to hear a mash-up of Third Eye Blind, semi-charm kind of life. With? With Busted 3000.

Yeah. Wow. But there was one response that we got out of all of the ones where people would like done their own maths and come up with their own solutions because i someone called alistair said their name rhymes better with flux capacitor oh yeah yeah yeah which i do know what i it's better than peter better than peter yeah i'll give that to you, Alistair. But the response I'm referring to came via the problem posing page, which is a problemsquared.com. Yeah. They selected solution.

Went for solution. Yeah. Now, they didn't provide a name or anything. So, I don't know who to attribute this to. But they went into so much depth and what i was really pleased with because after we recorded that episode i think i said to you oh we didn't talk about how you can free spam which by the way if this is out of context for anyone hasn't listened to that episode yet it's very confusing yeah 043 if you haven't listened to it yet that's the episode we

talk about busted song year 3000 know, this person mentioned that. And they run the numbers. But they also looked into how long you can keep sperm frozen for. Because I didn't think of that. Like it's 55 years, according to this person. But one bit I just wanted to mention in particular was they said, with the mention of a flux capacitor, like the one in a film I've seen and drove around in a time machine, the song implies a time machine is similar to a DeLorean.

And the video reinforces that. Yep. The most widely known fact about the DeLorean is that it needs to reach 88 miles per hour to initiate time travel. Yep. This is not possible underwater. Because remember, we're all underwater, as you mentioned. We live underwater.

We live underwater. I'm sure the video shows everyone in like a big dome or something. They're not like moving through water. Okay, maybe this solves it. Because then they said after a quick Google search, this is faster than any known submarine and is about as fast as some torpedoes. That would be a problem if you went to the future and the car was underwater. Yeah. So like how did Peter get back from the future?

Also, you can't drive underwater, at least not in a conventional car. Peter would have had to have known that the future was underwater in advance to be able to sufficiently waterproof the car and add additional propulsion. Oh, like what this. Where we're going. We don't need roads. Yeah. So.

That's very funny. Yep. They've got, and then they go on to answer it as well. They bring up so many. It's dense. Really. It's great though. And I, we don't have time to go through

it all so we're gonna do some screenshots of that answer we'll put it up on socials on instagram and twitter and you can you can see what these i haven't fact-checked any of them but it's pretty they've gone pretty hardcore into it right yeah next up we have an update on episode 042 where i talked about my code that found five words that between them had 25 distinct letters and i did a little side tangent where i said that uh people try to find two words that have the most distinct letters possible with no repeats and people have previously found blacksmith and gun powdery, two 10-letter words that between them have 20 distinct letters. And we found the new ones, show jumping and veldkraft, an 11-letter and a 9-letter word which between them have 20 distinct letters with no repeats. And you made a very foolish offer.

Yes, I said if anyone can come up with two words that use all the letters in the alphabet so 26 distinct letters between them yep then we would come up with meanings for them yeah yeah and we got sent quite a few different options but there was one that a lot of them it was quite hard to pronounce or they're a little bit strange if only we could have seen that coming. I know. This one came from someone called Drawings are Sketchy. Right. He has given us two.

But as I was trying to work out what my definitions of them would be. Right. I actually realized that if I moved some of the letters around. Oh, you can improve on. I could slightly improve. Gotcha. So these are almost the same as the ones that drawings are sketchy sent us there's now a collaborative effort yeah we've got ved farquing can i have that in a sentence well i'll spell it first okay it's a v for victor e d for delta p for phonetic alphabet h H, A, R, K, W, I, N for November, G.

Right. In a sentence, please. I was looking up words that end in wing that aren't verbs of words that end in W. Because often words that end in W have a vowel beforehand. But this one doesn't. I know you're wowing me. And you wouldn't have but yeah you've got your vowel beforehand yeah so i was like oh it couldn't be that needs to be a word that ends in

wing that has a consonant before wing yep and the only examples i could find were types of birds and ved apparently means like quite close to a home. Right. So like if a road is like a ved road is like a road that's really close to a house. So I've decided that ved farquing is a bird that gets way too close for comfort. Oh, nice. It's like swooping you. Yeah. Very annoying.

A ved farquing. Magpies are real. Ved farquing. There you go. Yeah. And then the second word is,... Vedfarkwing. There you go. Yeah. And then the second word is, I'll spell it first. B for Bravo. U, M for Mike.

O, L, S for Sierra. C for Charlie. Q, U, Y, T, Z. Bumholesquitty. Bumholesquits is how you pronounce quitty bum-holes quits is how you pronounce that good to know

can I hear that in a sentence yep I've got a particularly bad case of bum-holes quits

I don't know why I'm surprised so if we can just start using those words so much

they become words dictionaries have to vedfarkwing and bumholesquits uh as in it's a real shame that bird came really close to me because clearly it's got a case of bumholesquits wow i will add to that in in the vein of marginal gains but we were emailed by richard broughton who said maybe veldcraft could just be veldcrafty oh you get an extra y 21 letters now oh nice the whole alphabet a step in the right direction oh that was the longest word was it yeah that's so show jumping veldcraft was the two that we found. And so, if we did show jumping, veldkraft D with a Y on it, one more letter.

Wow. Yeah. It's no bum all squits. Well, we did have someone who wrote in. This is Nosser. They said that they wanted to find the longest word that they could generate that sounded like an English word, but not necessarily a real word using distinct letters. And so they generated a list of the most common five grams. Excellent.

That occur at the start, in the middle, and at the end of a word. Then kept only the triplets with no recurring letter and looked for the combination with the most common parts that being the word macro suadingly. Oh, macro suadingly. Which I suppose would describe the way in which a whole population would play pretend. That did go macro suadingly.

It's nice. That's good. 15 letters. Oh, 15. No need to rain on us as parade but there are already two 15-letter words that are actual words with no repeating letters. And they are dermatoglyphics. Dermatoglyphics.

And uncopyrightable. Uncopyrightable. That's quite enjoyable, that one. That's a good one. Yeah. If anyone can find a plausible English-looking word. With 16 letters. With more than 15 distinct letters we've already got so much like we can stop it this is such a sisyphean like we can opt out might as well stop buying lottery tickets in conclusion thank you all so much for listening to this episode a particular thanks to our patreon

supporters yes who among their many perks for making this podcast possible including the limited edition i'm a wizard episodes there's only limited in the number of people who can listen to it they're very long they're long they're not limited they're pretty they're basically the same length as a standard podcast yeah yeah but they're way less structured. If you like this podcast, but without the learning stuff. Wouldn't it be great if it was more rambly? It's funny. But there are, it is funny.

You want to hear me suggesting that Matt's nude a lot. A lot. So much. The other benefit is we pick three names completely random to thank them at the end of each episode, which this time includes... Hugo Balmer. Boomer. Steven Edmondson. Shivi Sharma.

Thank you all very much. I'm Matt Parker. You've also been listening to Beck Hill and our our producer who is someone who frequently shouts 180 as in i can't believe this recording is 180 minutes long it's lauren armstrong carter thank you all very much post credits yeah do you have a thing for post credits beck what do you mean have i got a thing of post credits oh you left me with a challenge when i was in the states i did because i left i sorry well matt goes to the cupboard i left left New York and realised that Matt and I never got our American version of Twisties. And so I, I was like, Matt, you have to find it. Now, I will say, I did not find the specific brand, Hawkins Cheesies.

I've brought Cheetos Crunchy. Yes. Which has been mentioned before. Yes. As an option. The printed date is the 3rd of Jan, 2023. It's not that far away. Not that far away, no.

All right. Ready? I'm opening them. Yep, go. Going for a smell. Yep. Oh, okay. Yeah.

They smell savoury. Good. Good. They smell almost woody. Oh. Oh, I get woody you're right yeah yeah they do say made with real cheese oh okay you know we've all seen americans version of what real cheese is do you know what i just started eating i didn't even just just chowing down they're not they're not dissimilar you know how when we had the watsits the crunchy watsits they're not twisties. Which is a testament to not twisties. They're not dissimilar. You know how when we had the Wotsits, the crunchy Wotsits,

they're not as salty as twisties. Twisties are so salty. They're almost more muted. Twisties are so salty they will suck all of the moisture off your tongue. Like you'll get those little spots coming out in your tongue if you eat too much. The search continues. Do we have a postal address for the podcast In case anyone wants to send us

Dots cheese curls Or what was the other one Email beck at a problem squared dot com You can't email them to me And we'll provide If you send a photographic evidence that you've got the snack We'll give you the postal address Okay alright beck at a problem squared dot com

Do you know what we won't limit it to America Anything that's like twisties If you want to send them These are good man