A Problem Squared - 078 = Spinal Taps and Star Maps

Episode Date: January 29, 2024

In this episode… 🇺🇸 A LAT of LA chat. ⭐️ If you visited each star on the Hollywood Walk of fame in alphabetical order, how far would you have to travel? 📜 And some sort of Any Other Businesses.  Send us your problems and your solutions to the Problem Posing Page: www.aproblemsquared.com If you want more from A Problem Squared, you can also find us on Twitter, Instagram, Discord and of course, on Patreon.

Welcome to A Problem Squared, the podcast which is a bit like the film La La Land, in that it started with me being stuck in traffic on an LA highway for a very long time. Have you seen La La Land? No, I haven't. Oh, okay, okay okay okay it starts with a bunch of people in traffic on a highway in la do they burst spontaneously into song they do they do did that happen that did not happen oh but you know what it's the first time i've been to la since i saw the film and now whenever i'm stuck in traffic or on a on a one of the highways

i'm just like oh it's just like the film. It's really taken the edge off. Whereas for me, it just makes me think of all the chase scenes I've seen on films. Oh, yeah. Or Barry, the TV show Barry. There's a particularly good chase scene on a highway in LA. So it's a podcast where we solve problems. Oh, yeah.

Sorry, I forgot about that. This time, we're in LA. It's a podcast where we solve problems. Oh, yeah. Sorry, I forgot about that. And this time, we're in LA. I'm joined by, I didn't think through the introduction, someone who's a bit like a character in the film. This podcast is a lot like the film in that I don't know how the rest of it goes.

One because of bad memory. Are you saying that I'm Emma Stone? I don't know. Maybe. I'll take it. Yeah, you got it. You got it. Great. Maybe we'll finish with I don't know. Maybe. I'll take it. Yeah, you got it. You got it. Great.

Maybe we'll finish with a big musical number. Maybe. Sure. We're not going to. We're not going to. That's a 0% chance that's going to happen. And I'm Matt Parker, your mathematician to the stars. Yes.

If you're just tuning in, if this is your first time listening to A Problem Squared, I would say maybe listen to a different episode. Yeah. This is a weird, like, a weird special on location one. Yeah, every now and then when we're in the same city, but somewhere else in the world, we'll be like, let's record an episode there, which isn't necessary. We could do it anywhere and you wouldn't know.

Yeah, you wouldn't know. But we are in LA. Yeah, we are in LA. On this episode. We have a lot of LA chat. That's spelt L-A-T. A lot of LA chat. That's spelt L-A-T. A lot of LA chat. Yep.

I calculated the distance between the stars. How vague. Thank you. And there's sort of so many other business, sure. Yeah. Yeah. More chat. More la chat.

But the chat is worth it. Trust me. Stay with us. chat but the chat is worth it trust me stay with us so how have you been la beck oh my gosh it's my first time here well this is it really yeah oh wow and honestly so many things have happened and if i had told people about my la trip like if you wrote a character who goes to LA for the first time and does the things that I've done. Yeah, you've been bad writing. Yeah, you'd be like, oh, that's a bit on the nose. Make it more realistic.

Yeah. But there's been some great highlights. You put on Evening of Unnecessary Detail. Evening of Unnecessary Detail. Thank you very much to everyone who came and said hi. We had a lot of APS listeners there. We did, yeah. It was adorable.

I loved seeing all. Nice to meet you all. Special shout out to Michael, who was a fan who we first met at Blue Dot Festival. Sorry, if you can hear a whining in the background. A small dog. There is a small dog. All studios in LA come with a small dog. Yeah, that's right.

Yeah, where it's studio. I've accidentally blocked the dog's path in my bag. That's what the whining was. There we go. There we go. Yes, we're recording this in Studio Sam Kiefer, who is... Studio Sam's place. Yes, who is very kindly putting me up while I'm here

and is the co-host on my other podcast, Enemy in Paris. I have to give it a shout out, Matt. It's fine. It's fine. I'm sat between both other podcast, Enemy in Paris. I have to give it a shout out, Matt. It's fine. It's fine. I'm sat between both of you, so. Yeah. Got to meet all the listeners. Yep.

That was awesome. You had someone sign an abacus? Someone had you sign an abacus, sorry. Yeah, I signed a lot of calculators. Yeah. I don't think, have I done an abacus before? It was a particularly nice one, though. It was a very good abacus. Yeah.

That was at at flapper's comedy club which is quite like an established comedy yeah legit comedy club sold out we filled it thank you listeners yeah 5 p.m on a sunday a week's notice sold out it's nothing to that's the power of the problem squared listener base then i got to finally return the favor because you've introduced me to many cool people over the years and then yesterday because i am twitter friends with michael mckean fantastic actor and musician i dm'd him before my trip saying hey i'm going to be in la if you've got any recommendations of fun things i should do in la he called me and said hey the band's rehearsing the band the band spinal tap and he never said

it he never said spinal head tap he just said we're rehearsing this week at a studio if you want to come by and then he was like oh make sure you come before two because we're going to finish early our bassist harry is feeling a bit under the weather oh just the bassist harry yeah and then afterwards i was like i think he mentioned harry shiro so then i texted you and i was like hey new plans today matt yeah let's scrap that we're gonna record yesterday yeah like forget that so you sam and i all uh went to a studio in hollywood and we sat we sat in a room we had a private we were the audience we were audience. We had a private rehearsal concert from Spinal Tap. Yep.

With Harry Shearer, Christopher Guest, and Michael McKean. It was incredible. It was surreal. Very surreal. Very cool. And then afterwards, we went and had a drink with Michael McKean, and he was delightful. Wonderful. Wonderful individual.

Yeah? Yeah. It's a bit ridiculous. I can't top that now. I don't think I could introduce you to any celebrity or situation that's going to beat a private performance by Spinal Tap. Yeah, you can try. I'll give it a go. I got to meet Harry Shearer.

Yeah. How about you? What's your highlight been? Oh, my goodness. I mean, likewise, you were there. So I feel like maybe this is the trade. I was filming a youtube video on tuesday yes in hollywood about film formats and aspect ratios and i was going

to say the mathematics of it's more the numbers of yeah and talking about scale and size and area and alignment and all these things. But we decided, given we're in Hollywood and we're talking about filming on film, we should film on film. So our film about film was filmed on film. Yeah. Very expensive. Yes. 35 millimeter.

If you're wondering what that is, wait for the video. It's actually the same film strip that used to be in old, like, regular cameras. You're using, like, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Perfectly normal stuff for cameras. I still use 35mm. There you go. We got 2,000 feet, thanks to our friend Truman.

Yes. Who's a film loader. Like, Truman's job is putting film in cameras. Yes. And he's worked on many incredible- Worked on a bunch of films you would know yes he pestered me pestered's a strong word he was very keen that we film on 35 mil and i took very little convincing i was like mate that's the best idea i'm on my way to la yeah get ready and we found a higher house

or they would call it a rental house yeah keslo and normally they would have all their kit hired out but things are still kind of spinning up after all the strikes and so they're like look we have a bunch of film cameras kicking around if you can get like insurance to cover breaking them because we they they lent us over $1 million worth of equipment. Yeah. Which is ridiculous. But lenses and cameras. We had like eight lenses and three or four camera bodies.

Yeah. Because they just wheeled out a bunch of stuff that they had in storage. And I know the value because I had to get it insured. Yeah, you did. In case we tripped over it or broke it or something. But we did the whole thing. I'm still amazed that you let me come along. Yeah.

Just being in the same room as it was brave. Yeah. But, you know, I wanted to get my value for money for the insurance. So I've never been so pleased to waste money in my life when we did not need any of that insurance. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But what was terrifying is we we bought 2 000 feet of film but then we kind of realized we we were going to be tight on getting everything in on that length

of film yes and what i really hadn't appreciated was when you're filming on film you can only load so much at a time i think we couldn't have more than 400 feet at a time in a camera. And it's a real faff to take it out of one magazine and put it in another one. So once we had loaded 400 feet of film, we had to do takes that would fit. And so we're like, ah, there's now like 80 foot left on this one or there's 30 foot left on that one. Yeah, there's a lot of maths involved just to work out how to film it, which isn't in the video.

No, but we were doing maths constantly to work out. Cause we were also filming at different rates. Like they were all 24 frames a second, but we were filming different formats. So they took up different lengths per frame on the film, which meant it gets used faster. It goes through different speeds. Exactly. And then we did some on the film. Which meant it gets used faster or slower. Goes through at different speeds.

Exactly. And then we did some on 16 mil. So we were constantly having to work out how much film was left in which magazine. And at what time does that translate to? Yeah. And we pretty much landed. Yeah, you nailed it. Yeah, we had.

You did not have room for retakes. Oh, no. Yeah. We did zero retakes. Yeah, this was all. Every shot was shot once. You rehearsed several times. Yeah, and then we did them all once.

Yep. I'm tempted to put. The only one that almost seemed to go a bit up in the air was one where you needed me to do something. You had to bring a prop in and you wandered off. I wandered off because I didn't realize the timing. Yeah. You know what I've tended to do is to put just all the footage on the second channel. Yeah.

Like beginning to end, just in order, beginning to end every single shot. And what we've been doing yesterday and today is finding a place because we've shot on film now it has to get developed so it's got to go to development place we were going to use one development place we're then going to scan it for us because we have to get it digitized to put it on youtube but then we realized they're like oh no we can only scan at 4k res and we can only scan inside the sprockets inside the perforations and like, oh, we kind of wanted the full overscan. Yeah. So Tremors found another place that will do six and a half K scan.

So real high resolution edge to edge. Oh, he found one. Yeah. That's great. So we'll have the whole film, including the sprockets and everything and everything right and so we can put that up on the second channel i think i'll put it up with yeah like the full six and a half k scans i just like just all the footage you gotta see see the wonders of filmmaking i love this oh i also need to say that my first youtube video for yoit oh yes your yoit came out yes i just want to say There's a lot of Problem Squared listeners that commented and that's really kind.

So thank you very much. Yeah, I'm looking forward to making more, putting more out there. It's the Yoit year of YouTube. Yoit. This problem comes from AJ. Good old AJ. Good old AJ. Capital A, capital J. Correct, yes. It's AJ. Capital A, capital J. Correct. Yes. It's like LA, but backwards. And a J instead of an L. Sure.

You all right, Matt? It's been a long week. I just feel like I really phoned in the introductions. Now I'm trying to find LA-ness. You're trying to phone everything else in more. Just little bits of LA where I can pick them up. They wrote into the problem posing page, which is aproblemsquared.com, and they said, if you wanted to visit each star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame

in alphabetical order, how far would you have to travel? Interesting. Well, we're here. Yeah. We went there. We did. We went there yesterday.

We did after Spinal Tap. We went from peak coolness to peak tourist. It's such a tourist trip. It's a lot less glamorous than you'd expect from the name walk of fame. Yeah. Yeah. It really is less glamorous than you'd think. We went outside the Chinese Theater.

The Chinese Theater. Is that what it's called? Yeah. Where all the handprints and stuff and the cement. Yeah. And we went past the place where. Is that what it's called? Yeah. Where all the handprints and stuff and the cement. Yeah. And we went past the place where they host the Oscars now. Yeah. And then we walked right to one end of the stars.

Because when I looked it up, I thought the stars just go along one street. Yeah. And so I thought, well, this is easy. I just look up the location of all the stars and then calculate the distances between them. But they don't go along one street. They go along two streets. Two orthogonal streets. What's orthogonal again?

At right angles. Yeah, so it takes a corner. Yeah, it takes a corner. And even like looking up where they all are, I struggled to find a nice, neat database. We've discussed this many times on the podcast. Half the challenge with these sorts of problems is just tidying up the data. And so I started tidying up the Wikipedia data and went, no, this is a mess. Yeah.

And then I found walkoffame.com. And that's the official website? That's the official. Well, it looks like it. I don't know if it's how official it is and i did actually it's the same thing i did for the earthquake data which was a previous problem where i was looking i'm trying to get a database of locations and dates of earthquakes but i realized i could just do it like the null search and they had an option for show all results okay

and so i got all the results on one big page yeah copy paste tidy done except they gave all the positions as addresses so instead of saying that arnold schwarzenegger is like at latitude or longitude or some kind of other useful coordinates no uh arnold star is at 6764 hollywood boulevard oh okay so where and there could be several stars at that address i imagine but also u.s addresses are weird because they don't use all of them like they're real dense which is why there's thousands of them on a street what addresses yeah what do you mean they don't use all of them you can put in a number on a street. What, addresses? Yeah. What do you mean they don't use all of them? You can put in a number on a street and it may not come up with any kind of building there. I don't know if that's like they've become obsolete or they skip ones where they end up

putting a road. Okay. I haven't looked into why. Right. I just find the numbers are not necessarily neat and sequential. Okay. Although I did check, they are in ascending and descending order as you go up and down the street. Sure. So in the end, I thought, you know what, I'm not going to try and get clever. Because I was like, oh, what if I put every single address into Google Maps and then extracted the GPS coordinates of that precise address? Yeah, yeah. And I was like, oh was like it's gonna take so

long and and i was on hotel wi-fi and i didn't want to get like the hotel's wi-fi banned by google for hitting google maps too many times in a row no to scrape because i got like you know there were let's have a look i had 2619 stars and there's some overlap of addresses, but it's still thousands of addresses I'm going to have to look up. So what I ended up doing was just working it out on average. So the Walk of Fame starts at 6,100 on Hollywood Boulevard, and that's where it crosses North Gower. And that's where we started?

That's the other end where we started. We went up to the other end at the bigger numbers, which stops at house number 7095, where it crosses North La Brea Avenue. And so that's, you know, a span of 995 house numbers. And I then worked out the distance. It's 6,900 feet long. Okay. Which means it's an average of 6.93 feet per house number.

So now I had a simple way to convert from house number to distance along the street, which is not 100% accurate, but it's 100% easy. And won't get me yelled at by Google or the hotel Wi-Fi or anything like that. Uh-huh. And I did the same thing for Vine Street. Okay. And won't get me yelled at by Google or the hotel Wi-Fi or anything like that. Uh-huh. And the same thing for Vine Street. Okay.

So I worked out where it starts and stops, distance. They're actually a little bit further apart on Vine Street. All right. They're an average of, what do I got here, 8.8 feet per house number. Not wildly different. Subtly different. Yeah. Then what I had to do was to work out the distances between them.

I had to factor in that if you're at one on Hollywood Boulevard and you need to get to one on Vine Street, you have to walk to that one intersection and then walk up the other way. So you've got your horizontal street and your vertical street. Yeah. Like axes. Yes. Which I was very excited about.

And then I realized at the horizontal street, the horizontal axis starts with an H for Hollywood. The vertical one, Vine, starts with a V. So I had the H street and the V street, which is both horizontal Hollywood and vertical Vine. That's great. So pleasing. And I take it to, because obviously if you want to visit them in alphabetical order,

seeing as it goes around a corner, you could theoretically try and take a shortcut. Yes, you could. But you wanted to look at if you're walking along the Walk of Fame. It's very true. And what I find interesting about walking in US cities cities when like a lot of la's grid is it doesn't matter what combination of streets you walk down it's always the same distance it's what we call isometric because it doesn't matter like if you go all the way straight and then straight or you zigzag all the way up the middle you're covering the way straight and then straight or you zigzag all the way up the middle.

You're covering the same horizontal and the same vertical distances. Yes. So I can walk in a very carefree manner. It doesn't matter. There's no longer or shorter path. That's true. So even if you did take the back streets, if they're all grid, it's still the same distance.

I never even considered that, but that's a good point. So I ended up doing the whole thing in a spreadsheet. Yep. I'm not surprised. I put everything in alphabetical order. And then if from one star to the next was on the same street, I just subtracted the two locations. Yeah.

Oh, and because I'm doing it as an axis, there's a positive direction and a negative direction. Yeah. Oh, and because I'm doing it as an axis, there's a positive direction and a negative direction. Yes. Which means technically I was getting like negative distances. Yeah. Because you're going back. I don't want that. So I just took the absolute value.

If they were on different streets, I just had to add the two values because you got to walk all the way back along one to get to the origin intersection of Vine and Hollywood and then up the other one. So, dead easy. Like, I thought I was going to have to write some terrible Python code. No. Nice. All done on the spreadsheet.

Wow. Very, very pleased. Now, there were two ambiguities I had to deal with. One was some people have multiple stars. Yes. Yeah. Tell us about how the stars work, Matt. So to get a star, you have to put together a big application.

And I think it's currently $75,000. Wow. To get a new star. And the person that the star is for has to not only agree with the application, but commit to attending the opening ceremony. Okay. So you can't like nominate Keanu Reeves because you want to meet him. Yeah, exactly.

Because he could be like, I'm not going to that. He's number one. He's got to agree to the application and he's got to commit to attending the ceremony. Does this mean you can nominate yourself? Yes. I'm looking at the FAQs on the website now. Oh, okay, what do they say? You can nominate your favorite celebrity with their permission.

There you go. By completing the nomination dashboard. Who can do the nominating? Anyone, including a fan, can nominate a celebrity as long as the celebrity or his or her management is in agreement with the nomination. There you go. is a celebrity or his or slash her management is in agreement with the nomination. There you go. If there is no letter of agreement included from the celebrity or their representative,

the committee will not accept the application. As you said, 75 grand. I was right. 75 grand. After selection, though. Oh, yeah, yeah. It's not like an application fee. It's a staff. Yeah.

The money is used to pay for the creation and installation of the star as well as the maintenance on the Walk of Fame. Can someone who is deceased be nominated? Yes. One posthumous award may be given each year. But apparently a posthumous nomination has a two-year waiting period. Oh. After their death.

Yep. After their death. Okay. Oh, okay. They're going to be dead for a while. Okay, got it. They can't come back. You want to check? There are six categories. I'm going to try and remember what they are off by heart. Okay, here, okay. You've got to wait. They're going to be dead for a while. Okay. Got it. They can't come back. You want to check?

The six categories. I'm going to try and remember what they are off by heart. Okay. Here we go. So it was film. Yep. The picture of an old-timey film camera. Yes.

Which you and I know well now. Yep. Yeah, we do. Radio. Yep. Picture of a microphone. TV. Yep.

Picture of a TV with like the bunny ear antenna. Uh-huh. All these icons have now aged out. Yeah. They were like accurate representations of what was happening. I'm going to guess there's one for stage. There is. It's got like the happy sad mask. Yes, that sounds about right.

And did I say music? No. Did you say music? Music one? Yeah, there is. It's a picture of a record. Great. And I believe the of a record. Great. And I believe the sixth one is now sports.

Yeah, I don't know what the icon is for sport entertainer. No, we didn't see any, did we? Like the lunar astronauts have stars. Yes. Although they're shaped like moons. Very funny. Are they? Yeah.

Wow. So they made like a weird exception. But I think I read somewhere someone involved in the process is like, we were pushing the limits when we classified them as TV stars because so many people watched the moon landings. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, because there's can I nominate someone who doesn't fit into any of the six categories?

And it says no, the categories do not change. Apparently one's been added and the nominee must be or have been active in the field of entertainment i'm wondering how long until you start getting um content creators oh yeah like online youtube youtube icon or a little triangle computer yeah maybe a floppy disk maybe a floppy disk um but you can get more than one category and you get a new star. Like there are multiple stars for the same person. Yeah, so that's why you've got some people that have done film and television. And TV and music. Or your e-gots.

Your e-gots. I decided that I would do the distance because the problem that's stated by AJ, it's a little ambiguous. But I decided that the most obvious interpretation of the problem is the distance from star, as in the plaque, not star, the person. Yes. So I was doing just physical star to star. Yeah. So someone's got multiple stars, you visit them all. Yep.

Oh, and I didn't, I possibly could have optimized the code to try all the different orders in which you could visit the same person's star. I didn't do that because I didn't do terrible Python code. It was in a spreadsheet. So I assume it probably averages out. It's fine. And the other problem was alphabetical order what does that mean yeah so i mean i would have assumed by surname because of because my mom's a librarian

yep and a lot of the databases are done by surname like like you'd put like you know books by all the surname and your roll call and yeah yeah i did not do that because not all of them have an obvious surname Yeah like Madonna Or Rugrats Yeah there was one for Rugrats which is confusing Because that's not a person That is a TV show

Big Bird I can accept because Big Bird is a character But Rugrats is like a concept That's true You don't have one for like surprise Like for emotions suspense why do tv shows get them yeah yeah good point um so what i decided to do in the end was i i decreed that i'm just gonna treat every star like just the string of text on the star

it is what it is from the first character to the last character rank them in alphabetical order also means because i've got like over two and a half thousand of these i have to come up with some way to search for because it's not necessarily the first space in the name where the surname starts and it's not necessarily the last space in the name because some surnames have spaces that's true so the automated space in the name because some surnames have spaces in them. That's true. So the automated process to pull out all the surnames would have been a nightmare. Oh, yeah. So I just went by alphabetical order.

Now, if I remember correctly, and you can tell me otherwise, you were not 100% convinced by the first three stars. I was not. In my ranking system. I was not impressed. Would you like to voice your concern? Yeah, because of the way you've done it, it counted punctuation as being right at the beginning. I just used Excel's built-in... I would have been so fine if it was numbers, if it was like... I don't know, if it was I'm trying to think of like one direction

they spent with the one with the one probably i don't know probably but anyway yeah something that started with numbers if it was 007 the character do you know they put james bond actors who get a star they put them at address 7007. Oh, that's great. Yeah. That's really great. So they're at 007. Well, 007. That's cool.

Yeah. Yeah. But what I'm saying is if the names, sure, I would have been like, yep, yep, that makes sense. Yep. But the punctuation, because some people, I guess, have like nicknames or whatever. So it's in quotation marks. So for example, Weird Al.

Exactly. Quote, open quotes, Weird Al, close quotes, Yankovic. Yeah. Well, actually, Weird Al is beaten by Shotgun Tom. Shotgun Tom Kelly, who we saw their star. We found it. We did. The quote mark is right there.

Yeah. We also found NSYNC. NSYNC. Which I didn't realize has an asterisk before it. Asterisk and NSYNC. I always thought it was after NSYNC. Like NSYNC. And asterisk sync. Yeah. It's like NSYNC is a footnote. Yeah. Asterisk. In Justin Timberlake's biography. Yeah. I was in some band, asterisk. Yeah. And then you look at the bottom. Asterisk, NSYNC. Yeah, exactly and i the problem i have with that is that it's only three i look if it was like 20 of them i bought okay i understand but you could have so easily have gone well clearly these are

meant to go under w n and s but i don't agree with the word clearly in that sentence no that's the problem yeah yeah yeah is that you could have done that but you're like the surname thing was like oh that's technically a pain the the addresses versus gps was oh that's a pain this is a philosophical yeah i'm sorting i'm a purist sorting by string which i think is a problem because i think once you start just accepting the way that computers tell us how things should be done like you're accepting this because excel told you that oh no no that's different because if excel hadn't counted punctuation and had placed them where they should be in the list but it wouldn't it wouldn't it

sorts by string but what i'm saying is yeah if i hadn't i know i would have disagreed with that i don't think you would have even noticed if it had ignored punct. I don't think you would have even noticed. If it had ignored punctuation. I don't think you would have noticed. I probably wouldn't have noticed. Not at all. But had I noticed, I would have manually put them where they should go. Whereas I'm the opposite of that. Whereas I've noticed.

Yeah. And I think you should manually put them where they should go. Put them back where they're not meant to be. Yeah, because that's the problem with AI and everything, isn't it? Is that some people are just trusting it. And it's like, maybe we should add a little bit of human intelligence into this. Context. I'm checking.

It's doing what I want it to do. Sure. Agree to disagree. You know what? I didn't have an opinion on if the asterisk should come before the quote mark in alphabetical order. Okay. And if it had put them the other way around, I would have been like, oh, okay, fine.

And if it had put like quote marks first and asterisks at the end of the alphabet, I'd be like, oh, okay. Sure. But all I care about is I am sorting based on the punctuation. And quotation marks came before the asterisks, didn't they? Which is interesting because asterisk starts with an A. Whoa. It's very annoying.

Whoa. Whereas a quote mark. Is number two on the keyboard. Yeah, yeah. And Asterisk is number eight. I wonder if like their Unicode, because they're not there. There is a punctuation alphabet. Okay.

In Unicode. Uh-huh. Because you've got your lowercase alphabet, your uppercase alphabet. Yep. And they do pack in some punctuation marks to not waste space but then there's a whole separate alphabet for all the other punctuation marks okay which goes space exclamation mark i forget the rest those are the first two cool so maybe that's what maybe that's why well if you're listening on spot we, and by we I mean Lauren, is going to put a poll up.

Do it. Saying, do you think that punctuation should have been taken into account? Or do you think Weird Al Yankovic should be under W? Lauren will find a better way of wording it than I have just now. But if you're on Spotify, check it in the episode notes. Let us know as you vote. But if you're on Spotify, check it in the episode notes. Let us know as you vote. I want to make it very clear that the quote marks in Weird Al are there in the brass, in the star.

Yeah, yeah. They're on the star. Yeah, yeah. I'm not discounting that. Everyone vote. Although there's only three of them out of almost 3,000. So it's like 0.1%. Yeah.

It's not going to make a big difference. Okay. So then I ran the code and let's just get to the answer. Where's my results tab? Total distance. You would need to walk to visit the mall in alphabetical order starting at Shotgun Tom. 6,782,987 feet. Feet.

Feet. I mean, we're in America, I thought. And what would that cost you in film oh my goodness so much money that is uh one thousand two hundred and eighty five miles round of the nearest mile just every kilometer yeah it's a long way i was like well that kind of makes sense because the whole Hollywood Boulevard is 1.3 miles from Star to Shining Star. And Vine Street's about half a mile. So, on average, that's almost exactly half a mile per walk. It's 0.49 miles per interval. walk. It's 0.49 miles per interval.

And I feel like if they were just randomly placed on the street, you'd expect the average to be about half a mile. Now, I've got a confession to make, Bec. Or rather, thanks to give. When we were out walking around yesterday, I'd already run the numbers. So I'd already worked out the distance. Yes. And I then, because I was thinking, it's probably the same as if they're randomly arranged. I then also did it random.

Like in Excel, instead of sorting alphabetical, I put in a new random number column, sorted by that. Totally random. And it was about the same. Yeah. I put in a new random number column, sorted by that. Totally random. And it was about the same. Yeah. I told you that. You did. Which I want to say, I did a very good job of acting surprised when you just told me the result.

Yeah. Well done. Congratulations. And then, it's because you're a professional. Yeah. And then. You should nominate me for a star. I will.

Who's going to pay for that? The listeners. Yeah. Thanks, everybody. Thanks, Yorana. Patreon.com slash problem squared. Yeah, yeah. So you said very insightfully.

I said, how many times did you run that? And you said once. And I said, well, I'm not going to trust it until you've done at least three. Three is a pattern. Yeah. I want a minimum three runs of this before I believe that it's just going to be roughly the same each time. And you were right. I was like, you know what?

You're completely correct. Well, I did it 10 times. Oh, you did? So, to remind everyone, the distance in actuality is 1,285 miles. 1,285. I did it randomly 10 times and averaged them And it was 1,309 Not only that But all the lengths I got randomly

Were all over 1,300 Really? So the true value wasn't even in the range of random values I was getting Yeah So I was like, from this sample, statistically, alphabetical order is unnaturally short. Yeah. Compared to if they were randomly placed on the streets. Yeah.

And so I'm curious, why? Why would alphabetical, I looked up, how were they arranged why they put what they put and there's no rhyme or reason other than they put oscar winners near where the oscar ceremony is they put like famous people okay the more touristy areas they put people places where it's funny right they put james bond actors at 7007 yes yeah and sometimes they move them too sometimes they move them apparently they've been naughty yes apparently some naughty which i still want to know why they don't just take the star away but i read up on that oh and they say it's a historical record and they once you're in you're in so wow so if anyone out there's

been cancelled but has 75 grand and enough people vote for them well you know you're likely to get cancelled yes that's actually better in now get it in before you've been cancelled so i was like well i can't think of a possible reason why that the alphabetical order is 97% the length of the random average. And then I thought, oh, hang on, hang on. There's multiple stars from the same person. And they're likely to be near each other. You reckon? Well, that was my theory.

And so then if you're visiting all the ones for one person, you're probably not going very far. And that would bring the average down. Yeah. So I took out all the duplic for one person you're probably not going very far right and that would bring the average down yeah so i took out all the duplicates okay so i have now also answered how far would you have to walk if there were no duplicates that gets it down to a mere 2377 stars you have to get to now that would change depending on where some of those duplicates might have been hey i have to admit i i randomly picked one okay i just want to acknowledge that we're aware of that we're aware of that yes we're aware of our limitations and that's a lot quicker that's 1180 feet and then i randomly did that 10 times to see if it's now

closer it's not it's still 97 of the random distance wow the on average it was 1217 so it's still the same proportional amount longer when they're randomized compared to alphabetical wow so there's an open question why is the distance to walk between them in alphabetical order significantly shorter, not significantly in like the, you know, effort sense, but like in a statistical sense, they appear to be closer together in alphabetical order than picking a random order on average.

We're going to have to contact someone from Walk of Fame and send them to this podcast. Yeah. And ask them if they can help us. Can question yeah or unless anyone listening knows or would have to iron out maybe some of my rounding and assumptions but it's the same you know your way and i'll do mine yeah well i was if you want to do it properly what you'd do i thought this through i was like well how would i do it properly i would walk the length of both of them both streets and photograph every single star because then you could ocr you could like just automatically wreck like pull out the text programmatically oh yes yeah and you'd have in the metadata the coordinates yes yeah so then you wouldn't be relying on anyone else's database

because i found mistakes in the databases you did yeah you told me about this yeah it's like it was trying to tell me sarah silverman was at 6 000 hollywood boulevard the stars don't start until 6 100 on the map we'll screen grab it because they might fix it after this episode goes out they got her star way out and we walked past it like in the middle of yeah we did yeah so and a bunch of other ones but it was just like a typo in the address or something i found a bunch as well that were again they were they were i only found the obvious ones because some of them were at 1600 hollywood boulevard and there's nowhere near the walk of fame so the some of the really obvious ones i fix but there may be other mistakes in there as well so you want to collect all the data yourself

get more accurate positions but i still think you'd end up i mean there'd be a lot of effort for nothing particularly important what this tells me is i think that there's a star missing for academic achievement the seventh category yeah that'd be pretty amazing is i think that there's a star missing for academic oh the seventh category yeah that'd be pretty amazing yeah i think whoever can sort this out should get a star for it what would be the icon for it'd be like a little excel like a little spreadsheet for well i mean academic does isn't just stem based on what it's all all spreadsheets. It'd have to be a little hat, wouldn't it? Like a little... Oh, yeah, a little mortarboard hat. Yeah, no, you're right.

You're absolutely right. We'll make our own. There's a bunch of blank ones. I didn't include them. Yeah, there were blank stars. Yeah, that threw me because I looked up how many stars there are and the number didn't match the number I was working on. I wonder if you can choose... This is now... This has gone from us solving someone's problem to us just getting a bit obsessive about stars.

Well, Matt, you answered it. Oh, as written, yes. 1,285 miles. And after we went to the Walk of Fame, we went to Dave & Buster's, which is a video game team bar. And we're delighted to find out that Dave & Buster's, one of their company mottos is ding, ding, ding. Ding, ding, ding. Yeah, we got very excited by that. So I'm going to give you a ding, ding, ding.

You think it's a ding, ding, ding. Oh, thank you. Yeah, Matt. I was going to say Dave and Buster's, but Matt and Beck. This problem was starting Beck and starting. Oh, come on. No? No?

Can't just put ding at the end of stuff, are you? Pretty sure I can. If it ends in I-N-G... Stop trying to make starting happen. Did we mention we saw Spinal Tap? Welcome to Any Other Business, which is a bit like the bit in La La Land, where it's like five years later.

Yep. And they wrap up some loose threads. I'm saying yes. I haven't seen it. You've not seen it. I've not seen it. So many of you were so lovely after the Evening of Under 3.0 gig. We'd like to apologize, actually, that they made you wait in the cult. Yeah, by they, you mean the venue.

Yeah, because they had another show going in. They needed the room. So I spoke to them. And actually, this is a recurring thing. I spoke to them and said, look, a lot of people are going to want to say hi to us afterwards. And they're very good at forming a line as long as there's a system. And the staff were like, oh, it's fine. Send them out to the lobby. We'll make sure there's a place they can all line up.

What I didn't realize is I was just going to send them straight out into the courtyard. And it is warm in Southern California, but it was still pretty cold. Winter, at night. And the line went out of the courtyard and then down

the sidewalk. So I'd like to apologize to all our wonderful, wonderful listeners who came along and we made them stand on a cold sidewalk. Yeah. I mean, we had to stand outside too. We were there too. We were also in the cold. It's not like we were in the warmth while they waited in the cold. We were all in it together. I don't think the staff believed me.

They probably thought it was a joke when I said I'd be signing calculators for a long time afterwards. Oh, yeah. And it was not. Yeah i said i'd be signing calculators for a long time afterwards oh yeah and it was not yeah thank you so much for for waiting around and saying hello the other feedback we got was a lot of people saying you know i can't believe i made it even though i you only announced it a week ago yeah people are can we not have more notice and stuff you're absolutely right the only reason that it was so little notice is because we really struggled to find a venue that believed you that there was demand. It's a combination of this bit last minute and obviously venues book up in advance, but I didn't even get responses from most venues. Yeah.

Because we got recommendations. These are all venues where either our friends or friends of friends have performed and know people at. And I get on paper, hey, I'm a maths guy from the internet. I want to come and get some nerds on a stage. It's a tough sell. But we're able to fill 200 seats in a week. I think we need to leverage that into we'll come back one day and get a new

bigger room. Flappers was wonderful. I'm not disrespecting the flaps. But somewhere where people can line up and not be cold. Somewhere we can be inside. Yeah, and the sight lines are a bit better for the screen. It was a comedy club. I used my flip chart. I lost some of the audience. By the way, if you were in the audience and you didn't see my flip chart some of you were asking where you could see it at youtube just look up beck hill youtube you'll be able to find my flip chart stuff but if you if you want us to come back if you want matt to come back the best thing you can do is if you know of any venues you think would be fantastic they've got the tech the screen yeah they can seat at

minimum 200 people then please let us know let the venues know let the venues know because a lot of the time it just comes down to them and do you know what this goes for anyone because i like just as on my own as a stand-up i get people saying oh can you come and do pittsburgh or whatever i'm like yeah if if a venue will take me, but we need to convince them that enough people want to see it. So if you want something to appear at a venue that you think would be good, tell them. Tell the venue.

Contact the venue. Let them know. Be part of the demand. Yeah, yeah, exactly. That is so useful and it means that we as a collective industry yeah i'm more likely to come and perform so because we all want the same thing do you have any unfinished business in la now beck you've done everything you came here to do on your first ever trip uh i've almost almost ticked everything off my list magic castle will have to wait for another time we were going

to go to the Magic Castle. We were. We realized we don't have... It's got a dress code and we have not packed for that. Ah, we didn't bring a fancy dress code. Did you do the Tar Pits? No, I haven't done the Tar Pits. Ah, put that on your list for next time. Okay, I'm going to put that on the list.

Went to the Universal Studio Tour. Oh, yeah. I've not done that. Springfield. Springfield Walkers have all made a bunch of stuff that's like Simpsons. That was very cool. Super Nintendo World as well that was awesome

Super Nintendo World you didn't tell me oh my gosh did I not tell you I'll show you the Super Nintendo stuff after this but I'll be back

hopefully yeah we'll be back yeah it's been great send recommendations at our problem squared on Twitter and Instagram we look forward to

the next one of these ridiculous on location recordings yeah thanks for sticking around. And look, if you are a new listener and you decided just to stay with us. Just to slam through this one. Look, you've got some really professional episodes

coming up that we'll look forward to. Oh my goodness, so pro. Yeah. How about you, Matt? Have you got any unfinished business? No, no. I mean, I had a great time. I think I did everything I wanted to do this time.

I enjoy LA. It's nice. My one final thing I have to do is record my other podcast. Oh yeah, have you not done that yet? No, I've got. It's nice. My one final thing I have to do is record my other podcast. Oh yeah, have you not done that yet? No, I've got to do that tomorrow. Back. Enemy in Paris. That's fine. I'm off tomorrow. Yeah.

I waited till you left. I appreciate that. We would also like to thank our fantastic Patreon supporters who went to patreon.com slash a problem squared and they give us the money that make this possible. Make it very clear. They did not pay for this trip.

No. No. No Patreon money goes towards these ridiculous trips. No. We didn't even get paid for doing the gig because we need to legally. Yeah. Charity gig. Yeah.

Ridiculous. So to thank our Patreon supporters Who fund the making of the podcast We pick three names at random And then we thank them Yes And I randomize the names The same way I randomized the stars I put in an extra column

Random numbers, sort by that And so I thought what I'll do this time Is I did both at once So I've got Randomized Patreon names, three of them. Yeah. And I've also assigned them a random star name. Oh, nice.

Okay, cool. Yeah. That's not problematic. And there's so many stars. I only recognize one of the three names. Yeah. That came up. Oh, they all start with the same letter.

That's a coincidence, by the way. They've definitely been shuffled. I want to make that very clear. Sure. So, this time, we'd like to thank... Rory Hennell-Hames, also known as Clyde Cook. Don't know who Clyde Cook is. NF.

NF. And they've been assigned Colin Firth. CF. The old CF. Maybe it's N Firth. Nolan Firth. And Chad3814 or Chad-3-8-1-4. The numbers are spelled out.

They're spelled out. That's some classy stuff going on there. Oh, also known as Charles Butterworth. Charles Butterworth. Charles Butterworth is a character that I made up. It's not. It's apparently a star, but it's a great name. Charles Butterworth sounds like the name that I would give a butler.

They look like a butler. I just Googled them. They're an actor who died in 1946. Okay, so they could get a star in 1948. Butler-esque. Awesome. I also want to thank Matt Parker. That's me.

Or the Ryan Gosling. The Ryan Gosling of the maths world, they say. Yep, that's what they say yep that's what they say myself not many of them Beck Hill special thanks to Sam Kiefer for lending us his recording equipment and his dog

and obviously a huge thanks to our wonderful producer Lauren Armstrong Carter who's asleep right now yes better known as shotgun Lauren sorry open quote Who's asleep right now? Yes. Better known as Shotgun Lauren. Sorry, open quotes. Open quote. Shotgun Lauren.

Close quotes. Close quote. Asterix. Armstrong Carter. so uh actually do you know what um have you had any interesting uh crisp i was gonna say if you had an interesting weirdly i'm not gonna open them up because i know that some people didn't like the sound of that oh yeah but uh i've been told that they don't do tasty cheese flavored doritos here oh yeah which surprised me well i've been told i see nacho cheese yeah but i feel that that's a different flavor oh so after this we're going to try some i found jalapeno crisps as in like dried jalapeno nops. As in like dried jalapeno?

No, like they're potato chips. Yeah. But they are very spicy jalapeno flavored. Because you can get a lot of chips in the UK that are jalapeno flavored. These are more jalapeno flavored than I've come across before. I'll take a photo. Okay. Cool.

Well. Good post-credits chat. Yeah. And Los Angeles out.