A Problem Squared - 051 = Have We Hit 1 Mil Yet and Should Yer Toothbrush Feel Wet?

Episode Date: January 16, 2023

In THIS very meta episode... * Did Matt forecast a million downloads correctly?  * When should your toothpaste be wet? * And there's some Any Other Sizeness.  You can find 'Fibonacci New Year' from @ayliean on Tiktok right here:  https://www.tiktok.com/@ayliean/video/7183451455569923355. You can also find her on Twitter!  And if you want to listen to Bec officially beef with Joel & John of The Deam Factory, you can do that here: https://shows.acast.com/dreamfactory/episodes/who-brings-a-ball-to-war-ft-bec-hill If you've got a problem or a solution, hit us up on our website aproblemsquared.com. You can buy A Problem Squared 'DING' t-shirts here https://a-problem-squared.teemill.com.   And of course, if you want want even more from A Problem Squared, find us on Twitter and Instagram.

you can get it ringing you can get it digging you can get it asking how as a matter of fact i've got it now a hard-earned answer deserves a big cold podcast. And the best cold podcast is APS, a problem squared. That's it. That's the intro. Hello. Are you doing your intro? I'm Beck Hill, one of the hosts.

Based on a, I want to say, oh goodness, when did the ads, it's a beer commercial that ran, I would say, for a decent chunk of the end of the previous century yeah i i've found videos from the 80s but yeah probably went longer than that even wow that's it so that's that voice you heard there that is matt parker mathematician comedian thank you and uh laugher of my jokes and And I'm Bec Hill, a comedian, not a mathematician, and receiver of Matt's loss. Yeah, pretty much. Laugher at my own jokes.

This is a problem-solving podcast. Our listeners send us in problems, and we try our best to solve them. And in this episode... I've calculated when we will have one million downloads and more. I'm going to give some more teeth care advice. And we have any other business, including a little bit of any other sizeness. Another way to get the size of someone's ring finger.

Ooh. Yeah. It's a good one too. So Matt, last time I saw you was before Christmas. You dropped me off at Perth Airport so I could get a flight to Adelaide. And I wore my twisty shirt and shorts. Good work. I came home and got changed.

And we've got... That's how that went down for me. And that's all that's happened since then. You just moped around real sad. Yeah. You're like, oh, no, my life is meaningless now that went down for me. And that's all that's happened since then. You just moped around real sad. You're like, oh, no, my life is meaningless now that Beck's not here to podcast with. Pretty much. I was just counting down the days. I was comically crossing off days on a calendar until the next podcast recording.

That's been the entirety of my... No, I've been living the Perth life. It's the exact opposite. You were late to you were late to this this zoom because you're on the beach i must apologize i've got to apologize for my tardiness for this record because yes i took your i took your boogie board down to the beach and in my defense in my defense i sent you a photo. I messaged to say, hey, I'm running a bit late. And then I sent you a photo of me with your boogie board that I believe we discussed in a previous episode that you like to boogie.

And I ended up in possession of that board because you were unable to take it with you when you left the state. I think you had ambitions to put it in a suitcase and didn't fit. Yeah, I classically just didn't measure it when I bought it. I just got the smallest one, figured it would fit my suitcase and it didn't. And as I was driving you to the airport, the rules go, whoever's driving you to the airport gets all the stuff that doesn't fit in your suitcase. So, free bodyboard for this guy. So, yeah.

It's a good quality one. I've seen many for so much cheaper since I've come to Adelaide. And I was like, man, that's a lot of money for one day of use. But do you know what? Totally worth it. Well, hey, well, I've gotten many, many days of use since. I've gone down the beach with it. I've taken my nieces and nephews have taken it down to the beach.

This morning, I met my dad for a quick bodyboard. And I could bring my own board. I'm like, I'll see you down there. I'll bring my own board. Amazing. So I have put your board. BYOB. Exactly.

That's what they say. BYOBB. When I take it into a restaurant, though, weirdly, they look at me strange. You know what? I actually walked it into a cafe this morning. So I went down to the beach. Yeah, but where you live, that's normal. It's pretty normal.

It's pretty normal. My dad was running a bit late for unavoidable reasons. And I was like, I'll go grab a coffee. I'll go get a flat white while I'm waiting at the beach. So I walked the bodyboard into the cafe. A huge queue. Turned around, walked back out again. I haven't got time.

That's a great story. Great story to get the podcast going, I thought. This morning when I didn't buy a coffee. The problem is there are no clocks in the ocean. I've said that all the time. That's where the phrase comes from. There's no clocks in the ocean. So I think we can all take something away from that expression.

And so I was in the ocean. Except for the infamous watch fish. Yes. Yes. I mean, I guess. and so i was in the infamous watch fish that's yes yes i mean i guess do you have other fish that are named after things because you get like catfish and dogfish you get fish named after other animals and a whale shark i don't know what's going on there sea horse that's another animal yeah well you get like sea urchin so i guess that's like oh like who's named after who in the victorian times yeah uh sea cucumber see there we go now we're talking so we've seen dolphins in the beach where we were swimming and one day i couldn't join my dad he went down for a swim without me and there

was a seal i missed the day that there was a seal swimming around so that was you know pretty exciting but no watch fish so anyway the problem is you're swimming in the ocean. You don't know what time it is. Hence, I was late. Hence, I sent you a photograph of me on the beach getting ready. Or did you notice the other callback to a previous episode in that photograph? Below deck, beach bag. Correct.

You will have noticed I was the primary charter. But the reason I thought I'd hide some Easter eggs in it means that now my entire introduction to this episode was me talking about going to the photograph and, you know, it's got the bag in it, it's got the boogie board, it's got the works, which means technically that was preparing for the podcast now. In fact, I was just generating material for the intro. So yeah, of course. Thank you very much. You just mimed tipping your cap. I did. I did. I occasionally forget there's a camera because you haven't got a camera in your cupboard.

I forget that I'm on camera. Do you know what's even funnier? Is that you're surprised that I saw that, which means that you would normally mime tipping your cap with zero viewers. Oh, 100%. Yeah. Yeah. Every now and then Lucy will catch me doing something. She's like, what?

You just do that when there's no one else around. I'm like, look, 100% of what I do is just for me. It doesn't, nothing changes. Yeah. My mom talks to the self-service checkout. That's what I found out. It's like, she was like oh okay uh all right hang on give me a second no bags and then and then when it was like please take your shopping

she was like in a moment i'm taking my time and it's like thank you for shopping at target she's like you're welcome and then i was like do you do this when there's no one here mom she's like yeah of course i do it's not for you no i love that so how's your boogie boardless life going oh so sad since i lost my boogie board um haven't even been to the beach went up to brisbane spent christmas in brizzy wow saw my nan oh my nan she's 91 and she's the sharpest thing we spent most of our time playing quirkle i taught her bandito which is a card game that i taught you and lucy all fun games and while we were chatting oh i found out that she when she was living in wayella the queen visited in 1984 and they had lunch what and and this was backed up by everyone else everyone was like yeah yeah no that happened because my grand dad was like the deputy mayor or something you know he was quite high up

but i said i said to her oh why'd you have lunch with the queen and she goes i was hungry i was like i love you as opposed to just a coffee with the queen yeah yeah yeah and then i took a i took a photo of the two of us i took a selfie and i showed it to her afterwards and she pointed to herself in the photo and was like who's that beautiful woman on the left in the purple that must be that gwyneth paltrow wow that's pretty pretty up to date i've weirdly given her an english accent she doesn't she's got a real aussie accent i have no doubt i feel like all grandmothers have to be narrated in an english accent i just like the notion of the mayor deputy mayor everyone else the queen the queen's you know entourage meeting up for some kind of official gathering

and just being like, can anyone eat? Is anyone hungry? Yeah, you hungry? Yeah, I could eat. Yeah, that's it. Should I order pizza? If I order pizza, will everyone go in on that? Do we all want that?

And then they're like getting into arguments about who ordered the ham and pineapple. So my family's normal tradition is to get together on christmas go down the beach send photos of them on the beach to me in england freezing cold so yeah for once i got to partake in the going to the beach and the and we didn't ever want to send the photos to which was a real shame so we we harassed lucy's family with photos of us on the beach that's the best we could do. At short notice. My sister got for the whole family matching rashies. That's really cute.

So for everyone who's unfamiliar with a rashie, it's like a t-shirt, often long sleeve, t-shirt like thing that you wear while swimming. I guess originally to stop you from getting a rash off your surfboard. But now they're primarily used as a form of sun protection. So you put them on so you don't get burnt. While Australia is not well set up for like the ugly Christmas jumper or sweater, because it's so hot. My sister got everyone in the family matching ugly rashies. And so when we all went down to the beach, were all wearing our christmas rashies although my dad is now continuing to wear his because it's better than his old rashy and so when i met him

yeah down the beach today he's still wearing i'm like dad you can't keep wearing that he's like no it's fine so you can't wear it just once at christmas what a waste of a rash well that's his exact argument so he's now yeah your dad and i would get on he's gonna wear it all year round so so next christmas i just imagined dad's gonna be like in a faded version of the same rashy the rest of us have just put in a cupboard for 12 months because i'm assuming your sister will get new ones no i think we'll get the crack up the old ones because again you don't want to wear them just once right so we've all everyone else is like wash them and put them away dad's like that's going into rotation it's better than his because his current one's short sleeve so

anyway no one in your family saw the lack of boogie board in your life and decided to fill that well it would have been awkward because we weren't at the beach or anything. Although I did. So I found out that my aunt and uncle, when they went to Alaska, my uncle, basically they did the rapids. They went down the rapids. And my uncle's raft with someone else. It drifted into a different, much more difficult, like, fork of the stream. I feel like that happened in cartoons almost exclusively. Yeah, but they couldn't see them it was actually super dangerous and cartoon style the raft appeared on the other side upside down without them in it that's not good and they managed to find them but it was like really full-on they got like dragged under a log that was over the water

and so my uncle from the angle he was that sort of got thrown like when the boat got dragged under a log that was over the water and so my uncle from the angle he was that sort of got thrown like when the boat got dragged under he sort of got thrown over the log and then eventually was able to he still broke a rib but the other guy got like dragged under the log and was under the water for a long time and he managed to get out which is why i'm telling this story because this is a happy ending uh we got him a little raft because they've got a pool. So he could practice in the pool. But it's like a raft the size for a child. And I probably played with it more than anyone else did.

There, see? Yeah. It's your longing for the boogie board. I feel like having, we've both spent a month in Australia. We have really slowed down. We have relaxed. We really have. We really have.

Zero energy. Yeah. Yeah. I'm like already thinking, do I need to make a Milo? Australia we have really slowed down we have we have we really have we really have energy yeah yeah I'm like already thinking do I need to make a milo do I need some form of energy let's let's let's all go make a milo and then regroup for the rest of the episode okay the first problem comes from me to you, Matt. All right. It's our problem. We mentioned this briefly on the last episode. It is our problem.

And I'm thinking... It's about time we had our own problem. The problem is, is that this episode that you and I are recording, 051, we're recording this the day after 050 came out. So we don't yet know if that episode will hit a million downloads you know for sure so anyway my problem is what have you crunched the numbers but the problem should we celebrate right because when this podcast comes out people will know if we've hit a million or not because we'll make a big deal about it on social media and then when they listen to the podcast we should be

celebrating that fact or we should be celebrating that fact or we should be getting people excited if it's going to happen you know after this episode comes out so i ran a lot of numbers to calculate exactly on what day we will hit a 1 million downloads which is not quite as straightforward as you would think because i can look up the average number of downloads per day however lessons don't happen in a in a consistent manner because a podcast like i never said will come out and a bunch of people will download it straight away and so there's a huge spike every time a podcast is released. And then there's like a tail as it returns back to some kind of baseline, just people listening to it in general. And so what I did was I took before the previous episode came out, before 050 came out, I went on and had a look at our total listens up until right before it came out.

and had a look at our total listens up until right before it came out. And they were 974,180. So let's say 974,000, which means we were 26,000 short of hitting a million. However, we average over 33,000 listens per fortnight. So it's overwhelmingly likely. Something would have to change dramatically. Because for the reasonable amount of time into the past, we've not been under 26,000 in a fortnight.

And so it's definitely going to happen before the episode we're recording now will come out. But then what I had to do. Yeah. Oh, my brain hurts. Was take the shape of the tail, like, because there's a massive spike and then it drops off. I had to try and match that to work out how many days of spike in tail to get the 26,000 listens we need. So what I did was I just averaged the last five cycles we've gone through. And then I worked out what proportion of listens happen on each day. And so I can do the day a podcast comes out is just over a quarter of all

listens from that fortnight happen on that first day. 25.6% of all listens of the other day an episode comes out the following day it's down to 11 so that's a substantial drop off but not completely yeah and then it kind of flattens out then it's like seven percent seven point eight percent six point seven percent and so on and then it hovers around the through four percentage five percent six percent level for the rest of the fortnight until another one comes out bam a quarter listens back back in and so i had to take that kind of that shape and then apply it into the future assuming that this next fortnight is the equivalent to the average of the previous five although sometimes if it comes

out on a weird day if people aren't i guess doing their normal routine we we have fewer listens on the first day and the second day gets bumped up because people are taking their sweet time i was so hungry for the podcasts that i subscribe to to come out over christmas and new year's it's like because everything else in my life slowed down. I was like, oh, man, I need them podcasts. Well, you are not normal looking at these stats. So anyway. I'm not normal looking.

At these stats. So I came up with a phantom fortnight based on the previous five. And then I overlaid that on a current number of views to predict into the future. And I predict, well, if you just take the straight up average, it crosses a million on the 10th of January. Okay. It's predicting like a million, 243. And 243 is well within the margin of error on my extrapolation here. But is that 10th of january which time zone

oh we do all podcast things on greenwich like utc so that'll be okay 10th of jan and then so we've got a bit extra time by the end of the 11th of jan it's not how it's not how it works we should be up to because it comes out at like two in the morning or three in the morning uk time and then the stats start accruing from then so all doesn't matter when people listen to it locally we get it as a listen uk time and then my model says by the end of the 11th of jan we're up to a million two thousand and ninety four downloads and so i'm like oh you know what i'm not super confident it's going to be on the 10th because it's so close and it's within the error of my model oh hang on i think your coffee's coming in so then i had a look to see if i took each of the individual previous fortnight's data and

instead of averaging the last five i just took each one individually and pretended that's what happens this time and one of them we would hit a million on And one of them, we would hit a million on the 9th. One of them would hit a million on the 10th and the remaining three would be on the 11th. So I feel like the distribution is favoring the 11th of January. And given this is a festive podcast, like it's an unusual time of year for it to come out. I think that smearing effect may push it down the road a bit as well. So my official prediction, and I'm a little nervous because I'm going on the record before it's happened. But everyone listening knows the correct answer already. I don't.

Past Matt, I don't know. That's my official prediction. On the 11th of January in the year 2023, we will have 1 million downloads on our podcast. It must be infuriating for our listeners who, from the very beginning, knew what date it was. It's all about the journey. That's what they say in statistics. Yeah, they do say that, don't they? Right after they finish saying, there's no clocks in the ocean,

they say, statistics is all about the journey. Statistics are all about the journey. And of course, if anyone's listening to this and they're like, oh, did they hit it? Were they successful? You can actually go and find out now, probably, if you go on our Twitter, I imagine, on Outer Problems Squared. I'm sure we would have announced it. We would make a big deal when it happens.

Future Us will have announced it. We don't know what Future Us have said. But you know it before we do, even though you're listening to this podcast now. But I didn't stop there, Beck. I came up with a second, second prediction. Because then I thought, well, hang on. I'm predicting we're going to hit a million subscribers in the year 2023. When are we going to hit 2 million downloads?

And my prediction is that we will also hit 2 million in the year 2023. What? Yeah. So we've been doing this podcast since late 2019. And it's taken us until now, 2023, to get to a million. But I predict we'll do two million in the same year. What? How?

I know. Tell me this algorithm. Now, getting it down to an exact day is tricky, but I pushed through and I predict on the 7th of November, 2023, we will tick over to two million subscribers. So if everyone now. If we work hard enough, we can get it to 2 million subscribers. So if everyone now. If we work hard enough, we can get it to happen on my birthday. Yes.

Yes. What a present. I mean, is there anything greater the viewers could get you for your birthday than 2 million downloads? That'd be pretty special. By the 4th of November. There you are. You've got to shave a few days off. I was going to try to hide my birthday, but I was like, you know what?

Someone's already put it on Wikipedia. Yeah, exactly. Both our birthdays are on Wikipedia. So for everyone who was mourning the fact that there was no mystery for you listening to me work out a million, well now, now we're all playing the game of will we hit 2 million by the 7th of November 2023. I will admit the model is both better and worse that I used to try and predict this. If your prediction for when we hit a million is wrong,

will you do a new prediction? No. For two million? Nah, I'm sticking with it. Interesting. We should start a sweepstakes. Because I've actually had, because I did these predictions yesterday,

I've now actually got the first day of download data from episode 050. But I was like, no, I'm not going to go back and do a last minute revision of my prediction based on that first day. I'm going to stick with my prediction from before the episode came out to see what's going to happen. And I'm going to stick with this prediction. Before we enter the second million, I'm going to predict when we'll get to two million. Okay. So the model is slightly different because I averaged the previous five episodes worth because they're all roughly the same, but they do gradually go up.

Our listenership grows over time. And so if you're just predicting one episode's worth into the future, I didn't have to factor that in. But I thought for predicting into the distant i didn't have to factor that in but i thought for predicting into the distant future like the end of the year i should factor in our listens go up each time so so what i did and that's kind of compounded isn't it well yeah so first of all i did it with a linear extrapolation. So I didn't assume compounding. I just assumed that they keep going up in a linear way.

And actually, if you look at our listens, so I went from, because I can't really go before we switched to doing one every fortnight, because before that we're doing the monthly. And so the data is different. So I decided to start, when did I start from? March, beginning of March. I started when we were doing the fortnightly one, so I've got 22 fortnights' worth of data. If you plot them, it's not super neat linear inquiry.

In fact, you know what? I'm just going to send you a copy of my plot here so you can have a look. All right, I'm looking at it. Okay, so you're looking at chart title. What a chart. Yes. And so what you're looking at is this is just the total this is the total downloads per fortnight is what you're looking at and so you can

see for the first half of the plot it bounces around the 20 000 line kind of gradually going up but then yeah it it jumps right up and then bounces all over the shop again. So that was the five words with five letters incident where I made a YouTube video about it. I was going to say, does that not correlate with when you made a YouTube video about it? It does. So we have a gentle increase from fantastic viewers sharing this with other people. But every now and then, like this is what happens with these sorts of things. They don't grow evenly. They grow in in bursts and so this is the same i find the same across podcasts youtube the works you'll be muddling along and then something will go viral and you'll

have a step change and then you continue to muddle along at that new step change and that's what we see in the podcast yeah so hello if you're listening because you joined in august i'll share this plot we'll put on social media with no context, just called chart title. So if you don't listen to the podcast, you don't know what it is. And you can see I've then just put a straight line. I've just done a real naive line of best fit. So that's assuming we're going to have step changes at about the same frequency and size and rate in the future to extrapolate out. So we need to have like one or two step changes over the course of the year to hit this target,

which is why I'm not super confident because it's not like this is a nice constant increase that I'm confident will carry on at the same rate. This is relying on having sudden bursts of about the same type in the future to carry on at the same rate this is relying on having sudden bursts of about the same type in the future to carry on i mean i would argue it is within your hands to control this because if we do more stand-up math slash problem squared crossover stuff yeah i mean we can make it a self-fulfilling prophecy i mean yeah well this raises another problem matt if you hit your predictions correctly yep so if on the 11th of January we have hit. I was right or I was wrong? What do you want as a reward?

If I was a day early, by the way, then just I would like to update my prediction for November by bringing it back a day as well. Because clearly I'm just off by a day. Or if I'm a day late, we'll move it back a day. I think that's fair enough. I feel like I just might have a consistent off by one error in all my working out. That's very funny because that's not how statistics work. No, because we know statistics are all about the journey. Oh, my goodness.

You know, I wasn't in this for the reward of being right. How about if I'm bang on five star reviews all around. And then for every day I'm off, subtract a star. So if it's like the day before or the day after, four-star review. Two days the other way, three-star. All the way down to negative stars if required. I don't know how that works. I'm pretty confident I'll be plus or minus five days.

Take into account that we measure this on UTC time. Yeah. So if it is a different date for you, but still the 11th of January, podcast time. British Mean Time. Yeah. This is a multi-time zone podcast.

So everything is UTC. Well, you know what, Beck? What we could do is if I get the prediction in January, right? That's a bronze award. If I get the prediction that we hit 2 million by the end of 2023 in November, I'm going to widen it up to the month in November, silver award. For the gold award, I went one step further. Because you said before that things compound.

I'm like, actually, that's a good point. Yeah, because the more people who are listening, the more people are spreading. And in fact, I want to say, because we are on twitter at a problem squared and quite a few people were asking for podcast recommendations and so many of you recommended us so thank you because even if we don't necessarily reply we see them i try and like them but yeah that means so much i really appreciate it so i then for what if i look at this as an exponential increase instead of linear so i did an exponential fit and so over the 22 fortnights of data i've got our listenership doubled it's 2.0474 times bigger than it was at the beginning and so i then reverse engineered that to be every single episode is 3.31% more listeners than the previous one.

If you just take it as a very naive kind of exponential fit to those 22 fortnights. Okay. Which means every year we're 2.34 times bigger for a full 26 and a bit fortnights in a year. So then I thought I'd roll that into the future. And I thought, I mean mean it goes up pretty quick so so it still predicts by that model that we hit 2 million in the year 2023 in the year 2024 we hit 5 million 12 million 2026 30 million 2027 70 million now we hit the billion mark in the year 2031 and then i thought well when do we run out of humans like when when will yeah the number of listens be greater than the number of humans now interestingly i'm assuming because these downloads are per episode right so

if people listen to multiple episodes that counts as multiple downloads so what i had to do was take the total number of listens and divide it by the number of episodes that will have been out at that point in the future assuming we continue to do one per fortnight so then i get a new stat which is listens per episode which doesn't go up as fast because the number of episodes is also increasing and then i got a factor in the fact the population is going up so i can't just take the eight billion humans we've currently got i got a factor in the fact the population is going up so i can't just take the eight billion humans we've currently got i got to know the number of humans in the future and so i was able to work out in the year 2041 when the population of the earth is roughly 9.3 billion we will pass 9.3 billion listens per episode that have previously been released and it will be on episode

number 523 which will be released on monday the 18th of february 2041 so right okay yeah so on i'd love to celebrate but i'm also quite cynical what but that that we will every human will have listened to every episode? I don't know what you're implying. I'm just saying, if our current exponential growth carries on to the future, every human will listen to every episode we've ever made as of Monday the 18th of February 2041 on episode 523, which is why we have the lead zero in our episode numbers to to allow for this level of

future growth what you're failing to take into account is that the quality of our episodes dips every now and then like this one so true so every now and then we've got a real real aussie laid back episode which may not give us the required got super relaxed yeah yeah yeah i don't know if we're getting the necessary 3.31 percent growth off this one do you know what's weirder is that you and i are due to our travel arrangements are recording episode 052 straight after this one yeah yeah so by that episode we still won't know a million because i won't have time to record it before that happens so we're gonna have to dance around that so no one what we're gonna have to do we're gonna have to record the next episode as if we're having a party for one million we could record it both ways yeah let's do that

we'll do both we'll do both lauren loves that she loves work because our producer is not on the call with us loves it when we make decisions like that. Where we're going to make a choose your own adventure recording. Oh my gosh. Let's do both. We'll do both. Yes, let's do that. Deal.

And I want to say hello to everyone from the year 2041 who's come back to listen to this episode. Because everyone's like, oh my, Matt predicted this. And so hello everyone from 2041. You're welcome. I hope, like me, you, Matt predicted this. And so, hello, everyone from 2041. You're welcome. I hope, like me, you all enjoyed the journey. I don't. You don't enjoy the journey or you don't? You don't say hello?

By this stage, you've already dropped me for a different host. I'm wearing, like, Beck 7 at this point. Yeah. It's just a bottle of beer with a Twisties t-shirt on it. Yeah, Beck 7 and Matt 13. I think that's what we're up to. Oh, we should get a bottle of Becks and then like a Matt, as in like a foot Matt.

Oh, there you go. That's it. And host the podcast. They've been running it for a decade or two at this point. Yeah. Cool. Matt. Yep.

I'm going to give you two dings that then Lauren can choose. Oh, yeah. Whether to ding or not so the audience after i've said this bit the audience will know yep but we don't know okay so oh my gosh matt well done that's a ding thank you five star reviews everyone and that's all ah so close so close sort of lauren enjoy that well there you go our next problem beck comes from someone named aaron and if there is anything that can be described as on brand or on theme for this podcast this problem is very much it because it's dental hygiene related aaron says is it better to put the toothpaste on first and then the water this

is referring to onto the toothbrush or water then toothpaste or water toothpaste water again so um for new listeners we've previously answered questions pertaining to brushing teeth and aaron's got another problem beck what are we going to do? Yeah, so what we learned the first time we did some teeth stuff in, I think it was episode three. Way back. Teeth tips and defining decades. Yeah, a long time ago. Oh, we were so little. I was in Australia when we did that one. Yeah, yeah. So we found out that you shouldn't rinse your mouth after brushing your teeth because that will just wash off the fluoride and other good things that the toothpaste will leave on your teeth.

I've never wet my toothbrush. I feel like I was taught not to in school. I haven't done a toothbrush whatsoever. Yeah, because I remember us learning how to brush our teeth in school. That's, oh, okay. And so I think, i believe it was for the same reason it's when you when you wet your toothbrush you're just diluting the paste because you're washing off some of the toothpaste if you put it on after the toothpaste and if you

put it on first i feel like it washes it off it's i don't know gelatinous like i mean it's not visibly washing off i would say you've not really thought about it too much. I view it as you just kind of getting the ball rolling. Like, yeah, because you want it to lather up to be, you know, all up in your teeth's business. So you want to give it. Do you do water before paste or after? After. I do start with a toothbrush, add the toothpaste, give it a quick burst of water, and then away.

I wonder if originally it comes from the idea of just giving your brush a wash before you brush your teeth with it. Huh. I mean... You know what? Wash the brush? I don't... Maybe I do water, toothpaste, water. Interesting.

I definitely... Yeah, what, Matt? It involves a lot of water. I think for the answer, I'm going to have to go to our resident specialist. Yes. If we have one- Dentist Sophie. One recurring supporting character, it's Dentist Sophie.

Actually, we have many. One of which is Dentist Sophie. And here she is. I don't think it really matters. I think it's Brush's choice. And there's the answer. Wow. There you go.

Once again, to the dental rescue. Hooray. I mean, I'm again to the dental rescue. Ray. I mean, I'm going to give you a ding, but I feel like you should share it with Dentist Sophie. No, that's fair. Ding tool hygiene. Ding tool hygiene. So we've got any other business here. We have a message from Alexander Smith who just just wanted to know did you have many people telling

you that january the first was fibonacci day they said if you wrote the date in the format 1 slash 1 slash 23 as if it changes depending on if you're in the states the uk but um i think they're more maybe there's people that write the year first well actually i did have i mean not to jump ahead in in what i'm going to talk about but people were upset that i wasn't using like the standard you know international standard format of year dash month dash day so descending order of time period units i think they're also they might mean in the format where you say 23 instead of 2023. I think they're more worried about not having the 2000 and in there, which is fair enough.

I'm a big fan. I put all the digits of the year. Yeah, me too. So, Alexander, though, you're correct. You did need to specify the format. And I apologize for scoffing so quickly. That was very judgmental of me. Do you know why I always write the full year every time?

I'm imagining. You're a completist like i am maybe maybe maybe i've just got a longer version of that answer i'm imagining people in the future future historians finding whatever important document i was making at the time and not knowing which century because i've seen old paperwork when i'm doing research and that people will put just the last two digits. But it's not always obvious what century it is. So, I'm like. Yeah, they're like, oh my gosh. Where could this Windows 95 spreadsheet have come from? Stop it.

Good point. Good point. Yes, I was told about Fibonacci Day by a friend of mine, Eliane. Who is a big maths TikToker. Does maths on the TikToks. And people keep telling me I should also distribute my maths on TikTok. And I do not do that. But maybe one day I will. So she organized a lot of us to do a Fibonacci countdown to the Fibon New Year.

So a whole bunch of different maths people. If you watch the video, see if you So a whole bunch of different maths people. If you watch the video, see if you can recognize a bunch of people in there. There's several maths people I've collaborated with over the years will pop up. And so we did a big old countdown to the 1-1-2-3 date, which was very exciting.

And so Aileen is spelled A-Y-L-I-E-A-N. It's a lot of L's. And she has that handle on Twitter, TikTok, Instagram, the works. And so you can go check it out, the countdown video that we did. And actually, I realized when you mentioned this was going to be

in any other business, I looked around the room and under my desk, I've still got some balloons from when I celebrated the Fibber New Year. So if you allow me one second to lean lean under the desk sure now i've only got two left this is not deliberate these are just the two that i still had i got this one here with a one on it and i got this balloon here with a one on it and so i've still got... I went live. Very disappointed. Correct. That's the correct response.

I thought you were going to bring up like, you know, a modeling balloon that was in a spiral. Oh, nice. That would have been good. No, I sharpied ones onto two balloons. I also had a two balloon and a three balloon, but they're no longer with us. So there you are.

One, one. That's... Legs 11. Sorry, that was my Fibonacci. This is why you need me around more often for your social media stuff. I have balloon modeling experience. I could have done a spiral or a poodle. Those are the two things really.

I've got experience sharpieing numbers onto things. You know, we all lean on our strengths. What can we say? You know what they say about balloons? It's the journey. It's about the journey. I sense a new t-shirt starting. It's about the journey.

It's about the journey. It's the journey. It's not about the solutions. Destinations are overrated. Destination overrated. Now that, that's a naughty dance track

just waiting to happen. Someone named Curtis also sent us in a note on the problem Posing page at ProblemSquared.com saying that they were listening to our latest episode about ring size. This was when, Bec, you solved the problem of how do you find out someone's ring size if you want to surreptitiously buy them a ring without them knowing what you're up to. Curtis. Yes, I believe that was episode 049.

Oh, yes, yes. Well, Curtis would like to share a solution that they came up with and has been useful for years, years. Curtis says that they made up a template, like a small document about the size of a business card that they referred to as the present information card and pretended like they got it from somewhere else so i guess they sat down on their computer and they knocked up like a different website yeah yeah they made it look like they picked it up in

a shop or downloaded it or like they made it look like a generic like thing you would get from a shop and so then on the card they put the put requests for all sorts of information shirt size They made it look like a generic thing you would get from a shop. And so then on the card, they put requests for all sorts of information, shirt size, dress size, hat size, shoe size, ring size, and a bunch of other bits and pieces. And so they convinced their partner that this was like a thing they got from a shop or whatever. It's just a way to collect all of someone's sizing information into one handy business card sized format. And so they got their partner to fill it all out.

Hidden in the middle was ring finger size. They actually said that they did every single finger size. Like they went, there's probably a name for this where you do a survey and you've got a bunch of questions that are just camouflage for the one real question you actually want people to answer it's like the you know statistical chaff i guess there's probably a technical name for this i don't know what it is but that's what they've done well i was chatting to dentist sophie and she was telling me about a friend of hers who needs to get people to fill out medical information on stuff.

Yeah. And so it will start with, you know, name, date of birth, address, and then it's like organ donor. And she was saying how in some communities or things like that where organ donation is actually, that's actually a foreign concept. Right. You know, for us, we're in the position where from the get-go we kind of know what that is we know what it is fairly early age but if you're somewhere where that's not part of the culture then that's actually very confusing that's a very jarring question to be explained yep and i just love that idea of like trying to sneak in like philosophical

i think if go one step further don't just have like are you an organ donor like are you happy for your organs to be given to someone else after you die? Have like philosophical stuff in there. Be like name, address. What do you think happens after we die? Meaning of life. And then some tick boxes. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. How many angels dance on a pinhead? Yeah. Yes. This is what they did. They asked so many other questions. They could sneak in what is your ring finger size

without raising any alarms, and it worked. Curtis is now married to the person they got to fill the card out. On top of that, they still use the card. I take it that their partner didn't suspect anything, that it was still a surprise. Worked a treat. Had no idea. Because then they

use the card to buy them other gifts using the other sizes in the meantime like it's genius oh right yeah yeah and all along that they've got they just they're biding their time they've got the ring size ready and but now that they're married their partner has taken the card. They've requisitioned the card and she keeps it in her wallet because it's got the numbers for all the various sizes that she wouldn't know offhand. Like, I mean, in Curtis's words, like, how often do you buy a hat? So there you are. They've got all their sizing information together.

And the card is living on. It's called One Size Fits All. Well, if you knew, you could buy fitted hats. Imagine. I couldn't even imagine a life where I buy fitted hats. That's a world of organization beyond what I can comprehend. I think that's genius, though. I need that for myself.

I don't even need that you know for someone else although that is a good idea but the amount of times do you how many times in this podcast has it come out where i have to give you my my height i have to go into my emails and find where i have emailed my height oh really for like a costume or something yeah you know like in make way takeaway or sizing shoe size everything the amount of times i've had to go in and just find an email for something official i just go re-measure myself each time how tall was i get the measuring tape imagine it all being on a card yeah curtis has accidentally invented a useful thing that's so convincing so convincing a fake thing it became a real thing wow curtis if you're listening and i hope you are I hope you didn't just stop after that.

If you're happy to share your document, that'd be great. Please let us know. If you're like, well, it's, I mean, obviously not with your wife's information. No, not the completed thing. And if you don't have it anymore, or if you can't find it, or for whatever reason, you don't want to share it. I'm sure we could, you know me, I like a project. I'm sure I could work something out. great work curtis well done ding to you ding to you curtis ding to you curtis and i had one more bit of any other business oh that's not on the agenda it is i've put it on there but i've disguised it so So just before Christmas, I did a little guest spot on the Dream Factory podcast.

That's why it says Dream Factory. I thought you were just writing down the kind of the feel we're going for with the podcast. I just saw the words Dream Factory and went, yeah. Just a theme. This is a dream factory. That's the way dreams are manufactured. Well, more specifically, the podcast podcast the dream factory oh where they come

up with ridiculous films based on pun titles that their listeners send in and they did that for one of yours the fast and the spurious good times that was the one yeah so i did they had a couple of guest spots just before christmas so they had scroobius pip on an episode and then i did an episode it was a lot of fun but john harris one of the hosts mentioned that he's always wanted to have beef with another podcast he's always wanted a nemesis right yeah and so for drama's sake i have agreed that there is official beef between our two podcasts okay fair enough i don't know i don't know what shape that no to be honest i did point out that probably you and Joel,

their other host, will probably end up just sitting quietly while John and I attempt to... But, you know, let it be official. John, you're rubbish. You're rebeefed. Yeah. Wow. Fight me.

I'm not used to being the adult in the room where I just kind of sit by and like, oh, come on. Come on, everyone. Can't we all just get along? Well, you can join in if you want. Nah. There's enough beefs already.

Beaves. You can start your own beef. I have a side beef. Yeah. Well, let's let it develop. I don't want, you know. Yeah, a side beef. I don't want to rush to the side beef.

Let's see how the main beef goes. I've never been in a podcast. To be fair, we do have unofficial beef with No Such Thing As A Fish. Oh, we do. Yeah, but I don't think they're aware of. I don't think they've noticed. I've not told Dan. They have no idea.

Next time we see one of them, I'll mention it. Yeah, but we're still trying to beat their ratings. We're still trying to beat their ratings. If anyone wants to join in with our beef, give us five stars on Spotify. If you haven't heard about this beef, we're trying to beat their rating on Spotify. We are not succeeding. Yeah. I wonder why.

It's almost like they're a bit more prepared than we are. Speaking of podcasts that are better prepared than us, thank you people who still give us money. Yay. In every episode, we like to thank three of our Patreons at random. So Matt has his randomizer. Correct. It's a spreadsheet. He's listed three Patreon supporters.

I have. We have started to have some duplicates. I think these are all new. We may have had more than one now. We sent a postcard to the first duplicate that we had from New York, because that's where we were when it happened. But yes, that's the thing. You might get thanked twice. You might get thanked twice.

You might get thanked never. Exactly. Such as the... That's randomness for you. That's the journey. Yeah. But if you do support us on Patreon, you do get access to our bonus podcast, I'm a Wizard, which comes out monthly.

That's where Matt and I muck around. If you can imagine a version of this where we have no structure. Wow. And you also get the satisfaction of knowing that your support means that Matt and I can continue to do this. We can pay for the producer that normally we have when we're in the same time zone. We're still paying her. I mean, she's still going to be here just in the future. And it makes sure that we don't have to add ads or anything like that.

And we can keep going until the year 2041. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So thank you, everyone. But specifically, thank you to... Neil Tarrant. Simon Fawcett. Cade Curtis.

Actually, I do recognise Simon Fawcett's name. And this has come from random. We haven't picked this out. No, no. In fact, you've sent it, Matt. So you know, Simon Fawcett, name, and this has come from random. We haven't picked this out. No, no. In fact, you've sent it, Matt, so you know. Yeah. Simon Fawcett, I believe, is one of the parents of Dexter, as in doing a Dexter. A young, avid, a problem squared fan.

Wow. So, hooray. Do you want to do it again, but we'll say Dexter. Okay. All right. Okay. Neil Tarrant. Dexter.

There it is. Do you know what? Just the whole family. Oh, the whole family. Yeah. Thank you to all of you. Thank you also to my wonderful co-host, Matt Parker. Aw.

To me, Beck Hill. Yep. co-host matt parker oh to me beck hill yep and to our very patient and wonderful slash not currently present producer lauren armstrong carter beck did you see in in the spreadsheet from the problem posing page we had some feedback from someone actually you know what i'm gonna i'm gonna bring it up let me have a quick where'd i put that i didn't even get actual twisties better you could get actual twisties we should do that so someone here they didn't select problem or solution because they were providing feedback. And they've got a conflict because they're a natural completer finisher, but they don't like listening to people eating. So they've had to push through our after credit scenes of us eating twisty substitutes because they need to finish the

episode and hello to everyone else who's still listening who needs to finish the episode but they don't like to hear people eating now for our credit we never talked with our mouths full i believe oh i did probably all the time oh there you go and i do apologize i totally forgot there's people yeah who can't stand it. So, yeah. So, I guess, you know what? Maybe we call that little era of the post-credits sequence to a close. Oh, man.

We didn't even get to actual twisties. No. Good times, though. Good times. Good times. To be fair, the last one, we did get matching twisties outfits. So, that feels like a good time. I feel like that. It naturally crescendoed with the outfits.

I'm literally wearing the shirt right now. You're wearing it right now. I'm not wearing mine. I should put mine on. I apologize. What are we going to do then? I don't know. Let's work it out next episode.

So much exciting stuff for the next episode. Leave people hanging. Leave them wanting more journey. Million downloads. Yeah. New post-c Leave them wanting more journey. Million downloads. Yeah. New post-credit stuff. Excellent work. Excellent.