SciShow Tangents - Numbers

Episode Date: June 13, 2023

Whether you're tracking the orbit of satellites, looking at your phone, or picking out a dozen fresh-baked donuts, the chances are pretty good that right this second, YOU are using numbers! Hate to break it to you, bud, but math is actually pretty important after all!Want more Deboki? Check her out at https://twitter.com/okidoki_boki to find info on all of the many projects she works on!SciShow Tangents is on YouTube! Go to www.youtube.com/scishowtangents to check out this episode with the added bonus of seeing our faces! Head to www.patreon.com/SciShowTangents to find out how you can help support SciShow Tangents, and see all the cool perks you’ll get in return, like bonus episodes and a monthly newsletter!And go to https://store.dftba.com/collections/scishow-tangents to buy your very own, genuine SciShow Tangents sticker!A big thank you to Patreon subscribers Garth Riley and Tom Mosner for helping to make the show possible!Follow us on Twitter @SciShowTangents, where we’ll tweet out topics for upcoming episodes and you can ask the science couch questions! While you're at it, check out the Tangents crew on Twitter: Ceri: @ceriley Sam: @im_sam_schultz Hank: @hankgreen

Hello and welcome to SciShow Tangents. That was kind of ghostly, wasn't it? The lightly competitive science knowledge showcase. I'm your host, Sam Schultz, and joining me this week, as always, That was kind of ghostly, wasn't it? The Lightly Competitive Science Knowledge Showcase. I'm your host, Sam Schultz, and joining me this week, as always, your friend and my friend, science expert, Sari Reilly. Hello. You got the friend bump. Honored to be your friend. You're my friend now.

I mean, I've, after, what has it been, four years of podcasting? Something like that, yeah. We're finally friends. I've been keeping you at arm's length, but I think it's time to bring it in. I saw Fast and the Furious 10 and I learned a lot about family. You know what, Sarah, you're part of the family now. You went from friends to family so fast. That's true. It's an olive garden in here. Well, I better also introduce our special guest today, our other resident science expert and Tangents editorial director, assistant. I gave you a promotion. We're all getting promoted. Yeah, I got promoted

to friend, then family, and you got promoted to editorial director. Love that for us. Editorial assistant, Deboki Chakrabarty. Deboki, what's going on in the microscopic world these days? Oh, that's a great question. Probably lots. Ioki, what's going on in the microscopic world these days? Oh, that's a great question. Probably lots. I mean, I think they're eating each other. They're traveling around. They're swimming. Sometimes they're bumping into each other because they can't see. So, you know, a lot of the same old stuff. They're kind of just like you and me, aren't they? They really are. Can microscopic creatures walk? I never really thought about about it i bet tardigrades can huh they

waddle they sure like they have their little legs and like you'll see them kind of like waddling along like on leaves and stuff so i feel like that definitely feels like walking to me and i feel like depending on kind of how big you're gonna let let your microscopic things be, like there's going to be legs wiggling. What does that mean? How big you're going to let them be? Well, like if you can see, like how small does something have to be for you to consider it microscopic or to consider it a microbe, I guess.

Like we're pretty generous over on Journey to the Microcosmos about how big we'll let our creatures get. We've looked at bugs under the microscope. They don't necessarily fit entirely on the screen but yeah interesting yeah caterpillar has legs but i would not consider it a micro microscopic no but i think mites mites are probably the one that are like the most leg-like and they're always the creepiest they end up being the most fun to write about because they're always doing things that are really creepy and gross. But they also, well, this is not a but, even more so when you see them, you're like, oh, they also look creepy and gross. They're just tiny.

They got little legs wiggling around. They look like spiders. But you're like, oh, this is a spider that's crawling all over my face pores or in the dust of my house. And that's crawling all over my face pores or in the dust of my house. And that's uncomfortable. And we're talking about this because Deboki is the writer of Journey to the Microcosmos, which is a wonderful YouTube series that I hear a lot of stoners like. Is that true? That's what I've heard. I mean, I get it. I'm not writing it with that in mind, but I'm always happy to accompany people on their journeys, their restful journeys.'s good i like that so if you're high right now go check it out listen to the rest

of this yeah and then go check it out yeah don't send them away from sasha tangent pause the show please pause the show go watch that come back every week on tangents we get together to try to one-up amaze and delight each other with science facts while trying to stay on topic our panelists are playing for glory and it says bokeh bucks oh yeah because you're the judge i forgot about that which will be awarding as we play we get more bokeh bucks and at the end of the episode either me or sari will be crowned the winner now as always we introduce this week's topic with the traditional science poem this week from me numbers are tough because there's just so dang many like 3 and 50 and 9 and 20 but though i'm no fan i have to admit without numbers the world would be kind of shit we use them to launch satellites and cool nuclear nuclear cores

or to keep track of our baseball game scores. Without math, we'd have no Fortnite to play, or bridges to help us get home every day. And even though I hate it, no algebra would mean... Well, I'm not quite sure, but I bet it would be a bad scene. So let's give it up for all digits, from one to infinity, for all they do for us with their endless utility. Today's topic is numbers. One I've dreaded forever, but people have asked for many, many times. Sari, what are numbers? I spent more time than maybe any other episode trying to figure out what numbers are for this because a lot of people ask about it. And we have a lot of probably like math nerds or mathematicians. As science expert, I don't feel qualified for

math episodes, but I'll do my best. So the numbers that you were talking about in your poem, Sam, like 120, et cetera. Oh no, are there harder numbers than that? There are so many harder numbers. So like most people think of numbers like the the counting numbers uh which are also called the natural numbers um they also are integers so like you can have positive integers or negative integers which are like the counting numbers then you have rational numbers which can be expressed as a ratio so like one half is a rational number. What does the rational part of that mean? So it means that it can be expressed as a ratio like that. So as a ratio of two different integers together. But then on the other side of things, you have irrational numbers, which are

numbers that aren't rational. So like pi is an irrational number where you can't really express it using two integers divided by each other. It is- Real long. Really long, like a string of decimals that don't repeat. And so you can't express that in any simpler form. So we were like, let's assign the Greek pi to this, like a symbol to it to represent this irrational number because it's an important number, but we can't express it in a ratio or an integer. And then things get even weirder. You have imaginary numbers, which are you take the square root of negative one. So normally when

you multiply a negative number and a negative number, you get a positive number. So the idea of taking a square root of negative one is, we're not saying mathematically impossible, but it was weird and bad and broke a rule. And so they were like, let's make a new rule. It's imaginary now. And then complex numbers are a whole set of numbers that include real numbers, but also imaginary numbers. So a complex number is usually like one plus I, like that is a complex number, is that quantity is when you start mixing in imaginary numbers and the other stuff. Who needs them? Turns out a lot of people do. Yeah, so many people do. That's the thing that's wild about imaginary numbers. You spend a lot of time learning about these weird versions of math that involve them.

And you're like, but it's imaginary. And then you find out that actually it's like super important for physics, for engineering, for all of these things. your hand around because the reason why we created, I guess, or discovered depending on your intuition about math and how you feel about humans relating to it, imaginary numbers, because they served a need. Like we started doing harder and harder math calculations to do engineering, to understand the universe, to, I don't know, just do math for the sake of math, estimate really, really big things or really, really long things or whatever, and realized that we needed the square root of negative one to be a part of it and to solve those problems. And so we're like, I guess this is going to be I. We're going to call it I. When you say discovered versus created, what does that mean like like math is just what

everything's made out of so we're not making it up we're just like figuring out more of it or something yeah i think it means and again i'm not a mathematician so maybe this is math blasphemy but like pure pure mathematics is what people like you're You're a mathematical purist if you just like doing math for the sake of math, whereas applied insult the pure mathematicians, because it's like, what is pure math? It's not like we walked around and saw integers written on things. Math is something that we developed to understand the world. And I think that's the sense of applied math is like, it is a tool that we're using to solve other problems. But this idea of pure is like you look at a leaf and you're like oh it's the golden ratio um or you see these patterns in the universe that can be described with mathematical constants or that can be described with mathematical equations um and so in in a sense i think some people might argue that we

discovered math like that math math is all around us. The patterns exist in the universe and we are just now learning ways to talk about those patterns that are already there. That's crazy, man. This is a good one to be high to. Yeah. One of my good friends in college, she was a math major. Now she's a math professor, She was a math major. Now she's a math professor. But it was all, she studied number theory. She works in number theory.

And it was wild looking at her homework or like the stuff she would write up on her whiteboard when she was like doing her homework because there's no numbers. Like it's just Greek letters and other letters. Like there's, it's just symbols. And that's how they like understand numbers is in this way that like doesn't actually involve numbers in my college which was like a science engineering school uh one of the like traditions we had is that if you went out to eat with people

the youngest non-math major was the one who had to split the bill because you can't trust math majors with numbers our philosophy uh do we know anything about where the word numbers comes from mathematicians have been around for a while uh since the greek and latin days so agorist and all those guys yeah the guys doing the math that was easier to figure out. There were still letters. They took the easy problems. Yeah. I can do a triangle.

Like, I could be Pythagoras, maybe. I know things that Pythagoras didn't know. So, who's the smarter one? Pythagoras is probably using the word number or a version of it. In Latin, it was numerous. And in Greek, nomos, I think, is what it was. And it just means like a quantity, a total or a sum or a quantity or a collection of things. So in addition to like thinking of an integer as a number, they use number in the way that we use number colloquially of there is a number of objects or there's a certain number of people or the idea of numbering things existed at the same time as they were figuring out arithmetic and mathematics and triangles and whatnot. So not a lot of change.

We picked a word and then stuck with it, it seems like. Whenever I see the word numbers, I always read it in my head as num3ers because of that TV show, Numbers, from way back. Because they actually filmed at my college too. My husband is actually an extra, I think, in one of the episodes. There's like a scene where like there's students like stretching at the track. And I think he made it into the episode.

So, yeah, I always read it as num threers. But really, I just wanted to tell that story to talk about how my husband was in the show for a few seconds. Were you in any of them ever? I wasn't. But I would see people filming on campus. So the show Greek filmed on campus. And it was really funny because it's like their version of a college enmeshed in like the Caltech version of a college, which is like two very different types of students. And so you're like, okay, so you guys are on the TV show.

We're all just trying to get to class and we can tell who is who here. That's crazy. I could talk about movies and tv shows instead of math all day but i think it's time yeah for us to get to the the quiz portion of our show and this week i think toboki has a something for us what is it that's a great question uh so i'm calling it this that or the other because it's basically this or that but with three options the game has expanded okay yes the sequel to this it's evolving so there are a lot of very cool numbers in the world there are big ones small ones even ones odd ones but not all numbers have

the honor of appearing on wikipedia's list of numbers this is not a list of all of the numbers number and someone's typing in new ones at the bottom of it all the time. No, there's a very important caveat at the top. This is a list of notable numbers and articles about notable numbers. The list does not contain all numbers in existence as most of the number sets are infinite. And also, importantly, all numbers have qualities which could arguably make them notable, which I liked. We're not hurting any numbers. Does it say that in the article? Like in the list it does okay that's nice but we're gonna we're gonna be very elite today anyway we're gonna only celebrate the numbers that have made the cut and we're gonna

play this that or the other where i will present to you some kind of number that appears on the wikipedia's list of numbers along with some kind of like question about what that number represents. And there will be three things that you can guess and you will get a point if you figure out the right one. Points are numbers, aren't they? In a way. So round number one, one section of the article features a list of numbers under the heading named numbers. The first of these numbers in the list is called the Eddington number, and its value is reported to be 10 to the 80. What is the importance of the Eddington number? Is it A, it represents the number of bacteria in the world?

B, it represents the approximate number of stars in the universe? Or C, it represents the approximate number of protons in the universe? Those are all very big numbers. I was like, maybe I'll be able to suss it out. Does it all seem like I was waiting for one there to be one that's like, I wouldn't have heard of that. But I feel like I would have heard of all of these doing SciShow stuff. Like at some point.

I'm trying to think what the biggest of those is. And then going to the second biggest one because it doesn't feel like i feel like protons feels like it's the most to me because the bacteria have protons stars have lots of proton anything with mass as protons right because those are atoms i'm gonna go first my gut instinct my bacteria are telling me that's the number of bacteria on Earth. So I'm going to go with that. My bacteria were telling me the same thing. So I'm going to go with bacteria also. Interesting.

It is actually the approximate number of protons in the universe. That just doesn't seem like enough. Yeah. So there's this astronomer, Arthur Eddington, who calculated the protons or estimated the number of protons in the observable universe. I tried to understand how he did this, but it involves physics and it involves something with something called the Fein's constant. And so he calculated the number 136 times two raised to the 256, which is about 1.575 times 10 to the 79th. So that is the Eddington number, but there's a twist. You're still not getting any points because it wasn't related to the answers, but Eddington was

also a cyclist. And so there is a non-gigantic version of the Eddington number, which describes a way to actually measure how much you bike. So your Eddington number is the number of like X miles that you have biked on X different days. So like if you've biked a hundred miles on a hundred different days, you have an Eddington number of a hundred. So it's the same guy with two different numbers. Yeah. Yeah. So it actually made it really hard for me to kind of like look up how this number was calculated because I kept looking up Eddington number and getting all these things about biking. And at first I was like, what is going on? Like, why?

And then I was like, oh, he was a biker and was rude enough to come up with two different numbers. Yeah. And name them both the same. Just keep it to one. Yeah. Couldn't you have named it like the biking, the biking amount number or something instead? Or the, the very many protons number. I do feel like this would have been a lot easier for you guys if he called it that. We have a similar problem because there's a Sam Schultz who is

an Olympic mountain biker who lives in Missoula and he's got a Wikipedia page and I don't. So when you search for him, people are like, wow, you must be good at biking. I'm not. That's wild his pictures come up on google before you i'm not i ain't shit compared to this guy okay so moving on from eddington numbers for round number two there is another number in the named number list that i thought was really interesting it is the hardy ramanujan number and it is has a value of 1,729. And this number is distinctive because it is the smallest number that can be written as the sum of two cubes in two distinct ways. So you can write 1,729 as one cubed plus 12 cubed, or it can be written as nine cubed plus 10 cubed. So that's just kind of a cool thing.

The name refers to the two Cambridge mathematicians who described its uniqueness. But 1,729 also goes by another name. Which of the following is it? Is it A, it's known as the taxi cab number, referring to the vehicle that prompted discussion of the number. B, is it known as the ale number, referring to the vehicle that prompted discussion of the number? B, is it known as the

ale number referring to the beverage they were consuming when discussing the number? Or C, is it the Trinity number named for the Cambridge College math department they worked in? That last one's so boring. I hope it's not that one. But I can't think of what taxi would have anything to, like, like why i guess if you're a huge dork you'd be like this taxi's a cube like i feel like the al number is drawing me to it and because it's the fun one and because if i know anything about scientists and mathematicians all they do when they get drunk is yell about science and math, me included. I'm like, here's a fun fact. We don't even need to be drunk. You'll just be sitting around. I'll be like,

here's a fun fact, you guys. I'm going to go with the AL number. I'll go with the taxicab one, even though I'm sure there's some smart guy reason it's that one. Sam, it is the taxicab number. So in 1914, the mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan went from India to England to work with the mathematician G.H. Hardy after impressing him with his mathematical intuition that he just wrote out in a letter. And he just wrote out this really cool thing. And Hardy was like, you seem super smart. Let's do math together. We're pen pals. Unfortunately, at one point, Ramanujan fell ill.

So Hardy took a cab to visit him. And at one point later, Hardy wrote this in his memoirs, I guess. I remember once going to see him when he was lying ill at Putney. I had ridden in taxi cab number 1729 and remarked that the number seemed to me rather a dull one and that I hoped it was not an unfavorable omen. one and that I hoped it was not an unfavorable omen. No, he replied. It is a very interesting number. It is the smallest number expressible as the sum of two cubes in two different ways. That's so cute. Yeah. I just thought that was a really cool story. His friend was sick. And so there are other taxicube numbers out there. But they're not all written in two different ways. So 1729 is the tax taxicab number for like the number two. Then the next taxicab number is 87,539,319, which can be written as the sum of three cubes in three different or two cubes in three different ways.

So, yeah, there's more out there. But, yeah, I just really love that story. That's a great story. That one fits less good on a car. So I'm glad he saw the other one. So now for the last round, numbers are known for their cultural or practical significance. So of course, there is a section in the Wikipedia article titled cultural or practical significance, which includes the number 65,537. What is the significance of this number?

Is it A, it's the number of transistors in the first Texas Instruments calculator? B, it is the number of words in Romeo and Juliet? Or C, it is a number commonly used to encrypt data on the internet? Are all of these on the Wikipedia article, like all of the ones you just said? Like, are they all actual notable numbers? So you've made some of them up completely. Boki, you're so powerful powerful you're basically a mathematician i mean there are theoretically numbers for those things but maybe one can be the deboki number but that would be really cool what's the last one the number commonly used to encrypt data on the internet

the deboki number yeah you know deboki notable cryptographer i like i feel like the shakespeare one is something that a big dork would be like uh-huh this will be my jersey number when i'm playing minor rec league baseball or something so that one i think is what it is i think it's the texas instruments one because i feel like calculator people are big old nerds too in the same way where they're like i work so hard building this little calculator so this has to be a significant number and then they probably like typed it you know how you like type out boobs on the calculator they typed out this number on the calculator and we're like this is the number of transistors inside yeah i bet if you do it on a like on the calculator and we're like, this is the number of transistors inside. Yeah, I bet if you do it on a calculator

and you push a certain button, you can play Snake or something on the calculator. That's how you get Mario on the calculator. That's the SAM number. Unfortunately, neither of you are right, but I really liked that story. That would have been so great. If it turns out that I'm wrong

and there actually is 65,537 transistors on the first TI calculator. That would be bonkers. Your brain should be studied if that's the case. How would you know that? I'm sure there's a number out there. I actually did look it up to see if it was a remotely realistic idea. If it was remotely realistic for that to be the number of transistors and I couldn't find it.

Just in case I knew a lot about calculators. Is that why? Yeah. I did look up the number of words in Romeo and Juliet and I think it was more like 20 to 30,000-ish. But 65,537 is a number that's super important to a lot of us, even though we don't know that. It's a commonly used value in the RSA

algorithm, which is used a lot to encrypt our data. And so this algorithm was first described in 1977. And the way it works, there's a public key and a private key. So the idea is that if you're sending a message to a friend, you can use their public key to encrypt their message. And so that key, everyone knows, like it's widely available, like we all know what it is, but they have a private key that none of us know. And so they'll, when they get the message, they'll decrypt it. And so to get these public and private keys, there's actually a mathematical, like there's a lot of math underlying this, and I don't understand a lot of it, but the idea is that they're mathematically linked, but you can't

actually use someone's public key to calculate their private key. Like even if we know the algorithm and everything, it's just not possible to do it that way. And you start out with these two large prime numbers, you have to multiply them together. And then you basically raise that number to some value E, where E is some kind of prime number. And the thing about E is that it has to be large enough where it's secure, but it's also not going to be so large that it's going to make things really hard for computers to do. And that's where 65,537 comes in. It's basically this number that makes it easy enough to do. It's something that was commonly used from the beginning. And so it's just sort of kind of continued being really commonly used in this algorithm today even if a lot of us don't realize that we rely on it last the end of the game and

the score is i have one point and sari has no points so no numbers in my head at all zero's a number in that that's true yeah right that's true it That's true. Is it a rational number? It is a rational number. I think the question is about whether it's a natural number, but I don't remember enough about natural numbers to remember what makes it natural or not natural. What's really important here is that I have one point, and now it's time for us to take a short break and now it's time for the fact that Sari and I have brought science facts to present in an attempt to blow Deboki's mind. After we've presented our facts, Deboki will judge them and award book bucks anyway that she sees fit. But first to decide who goes first, Deboki has a trivia question for us. In 1938, an American mathematician named Edward Kasner asked his nine-year-old nephew named Milton to come up

with a name for the number 10 to the 100. And his nephew came up with the name Google, G-O-O-G-O-L. Later, Milton suggested an even larger number called the Googleplex that would be one followed by as many zeros that you can write before getting tired. Kasner decided that the value of Googleplex should be 10 to the Google, a number so large that many think it cannot be written in full, but that hasn't stopped some people from trying. If you go to www.googleplexwrittenout.com,

you can find a set of books in PDF form authored by Wolfgang h niche niche that he claims contains the entirety of the value of googleplex written out how many volumes does this set require well it's a pdf so any amount of volumes would just be him stunting on you right it's true so how many how many did he decide it needs okay i feel like i remember commercials for like a 30 volume encyclopedia britannica set that feels like a lot of books but it feels like it'd be more than 30 is like where i'm going from you'd have to pay several hundred dollars for it for this niches a little. His little project. Little pet project. So I'm going to say like 130 volumes.

No way. This guy's going to write. He's going to say a volumes one zero and just go crazy or something. This is going to have like a million volumes. It's a PDF. It can have as many volumes as he wants it to that's true that's true the answer is 10 to the 94 volumes it was a question basically designed for whoever comes up with the more stupidly large number

is gonna win it's gonna be really rewards a commitment to i know how large orders of magnitude you're on the same wavelength as wolfgang and milton at the same time somehow yeah also we got a nine-year-old doing our math stuff for us when we're listening to him so yeah i think uh sam you are the winner you got a little bit closer than sari did to 10 to the 94 okay well then well then I'll go first. One of the main things we do with numbers is math. You should all be familiar with math, seeing as we start learning it like day one of school. And another thing that many of us learn, maybe like on day one and a half of school, is that counting on your fingers is no good. You have to do that shit in your head or don't do it

at all. But doing it in your head is very hard. And maybe certain people still do a little finger finger wiggling when they have to add stuff up and they feel ashamed about it. But I am here today to bring a very small amount of justice to all of us who sneakily count our fingers in our pockets or behind our backs as we tabulate the results of dice rolls or try to like price compare different brands of butter at the grocery store. But first, I have to define something. Finger nosia, which is not another way to say picking your nose, but basically the ability to perceive and operate your fingers. And there has been a known link between finger nosia and math skills for like decades, such as musicians are usually better at math than other people.

And they're using their fingers all the time. But a study performed in 2016 proposed a pretty good theory for why this link exists. The study gave kids ages 8 to 13 some math problems and found that as they solved them, the part of the brain responsible for finger gnosis lit up less for kids who did better on subtraction problems and more for kids who did worse. Which might sound to you like the more you like picture your fingers, the worse you are at math. But the kids who did better also had better physical motor skills and awareness in their fingers. So the researcher's takeaway was this. Everyone's brains seem to naturally picture using fingers in some capacity when doing math. So the easier it is to picture the idea of fingers in

your brain, the better that you might be at math. So the kids with less activity in the finger nosia area of their brain did better because they were just like, oh, I can picture that shit right off the top of my head. And then other kids were like, oh, I really got to picture these fingers. And then their brain got hotter, whatever happens to your brain and a way to train up your brain okay that makes it hotter probably you get a fever yeah a little bit probably gets a little hotter and a way to train up your brain and get some finger gnosis going is by letting kids use their fingers to count when they're really little some scientists suggest it might even be harmful to discourage finger counting at a young age vindication of course there's also studies from

around the same time that found that better finger gnosis only represented a 1-2% increase in math performance, but still a little tiny bit of vindication at the very worst. And in fact, another study found that adults who tried to do math in their heads while their hands were occupied with non-math movements were worse at math. So you're all counting on your fingers, even if you don't even realize that you're counting on your fingers. So everybody out there who does realize they're counting their fingers, count your fingers. It's what your brains want you to do.

Unfortunately, the reason why I personally am still bad at math, even when I use my fingers, is a mystery that science will never be able to solve. even when I use my fingers, is a mystery that science will never be able to solve. Oh. Do you guys use your fingers a little bit to count? Do you do math? Probably not.

You went to MIT. I'm trying to think of when I need to count. Probably not. I was thinking about putting my sister on blast because she counts on her fingers in a really weird way. Like, she does one two three four five but then makes the shape of six like six seven eight nine what the heck so she only uses the one hand she uses one hand that's what it is yeah and always did this growing up and i was like what and then i don't know i think she just made it up like milton like, what? And then how did she do that? I don't know.

I think she just made it up like Milton did. And does she still do it? Yeah, she does. Like when she's counting to herself on her fingers, then it's like six, seven, eight, nine, 10. That was very interesting. Sari? Sorry.

Oh yeah, I don't know how to transition. I'm so bad at communicating in this situation. Sam, do you I don't know how to transition. I'm so bad at repeating things in this situation. Sam, do you want to pass it to me? Sari, what do you got for us? Yeah, perfect. Bring me facts. I can't be expected to say things. Num, num, num, num, num.

Bring me facts. Okay. So besides thinking about complicated math, because I've left that behind to my academic self, when I think about numbers, I think about number puzzles like Sudoku, the one that appears in newspapers and stuff. For anyone who doesn't know about it, it has a nine by nine grid. And the goal is to make sure each row, column,

and three by three box in the puzzle have the numbers one through nine in them with no repeats. And each puzzle comes pre-filled with some numbers to give you a starting point for your logic and generally the more numbers that are already there in the puzzle the easier it is to solve because there are more starting points and even though it is technically a number puzzle in the way it's set up you could replace the integers with nine colors or rocks or pokemon characters and the logical puzzle solving method is the same this is like my tangent within

my fact that the puzzle didn't actually originate in japan despite the japanese name which is like weird and interesting uh the core logic puzzle idea of filling up squares with different objects in rows and columns is attributed to leonard euler a swiss sw mathematician, and his so-called Latin squares grids from 1783. Then modern Sudoku kicked off when Dell Puzzle Magazines in New York City of the United States published a puzzle called Number Place in the late 1970s, which was then riffed on and popularized by the publisher Nikoli in Japan. So that's when it became sudoku wasn't until like the 1980s and onward sudoku is a far better name than any of the other names you said a number place yeah so history lesson aside mathematicians enjoy logic puzzles and calculating

things to their extremes like how many essentially unique Sudoku puzzles exist, which I think is over 5 billion, or what's the hardest possible puzzle, which basically means what is the minimum number of filled in squares you can give someone at the beginning and make it still solvable. And in 2012, three mathematicians from the University College in Dublin

did about a year of computation after developing an algorithm to find that the answer is 17. A 17 clue Sudoku is solvable, while a 16 clue Sudoku or anything below that is not. They are just sitting around for a one year doing this. Yeah. Apparently, this is what's interesting about this fact. It could be a factoid, but I dug into their paper thinking i could share some sudoku secrets because i'm like very bad at it it turns out that solving

this kind of logic puzzle is really computationally difficult is just why it took like a year of going through the calculations you can like brute force each square and fill it with a number and then backtrack when it the puzzle breaks or you can fill out the grid completely and then go back and fix errors again and again and again until finally there are no errors and it's solved. Or you can start getting into some complicated combinatorics, which is the subset of math that deals with permutations of sets and whatnot. The kind of math that Deboki's friend was doing where you have a bunch of letters that stand in for things but like math is cool and complicated and i think this like understanding how computationally complicated sudoku is for computers makes me appreciate human brains even more because like this is a logic puzzle people do for fun but it is something that is difficult to do mathematically or automated in a computer

because even though it is numbers which we think computers run on which they do in binary this is this is logic this is like a puzzle about same shapes and different shapes and and arranging those things in different permutations it's the edge we need in the robot wars this is how we defeat the robots we give them a sudoku and then run away i really enjoyed both those i really like the idea that it's actually like good for you to, to use your fingers for math. I think I have to give it to Sudoku just because I like the problem, the weirdness of the problem of deciding to, to do that, to, to figure it out. Mine has one number. What's the minimum Sudoku? 17. That's a number. Fingers, not numbers.

10. There's 10 of them. Noam Sudoku, 17. That's a number. Fingers, not numbers. 10. There's 10 of them. I did spend some time as I was deciding in my head between the two where I was like, does Ceres count as a numbers fact?

And then I decided that the fact that there was a number in there made it count. Just barely. I'm eking by. Well, okay. I'm sure all the people who are watching this live on the YouTube premiere are probably furious right now and thank you if you are it's fair but the thing about fact off is you can give any number of points that you want so you have to decide if me and sari tied or well am i gonna have to do extra work if you guys tied no no you can just say that we tied and be done okay i was worried i was gonna have to come up with a question like a tiebreaker situation um cool then i give sari one point i can't say that i liked her fact two points more

than yours so you're so nice all right and now it's time to ask the science couch where we ask a question to our couch of finally on scientific minds this week's question iriandia on youtube asks will it ever be possible to build computers that use systems other than binary numbers sounds dangerous we don't want them to know about too yeah i'm so curious about this because i i feel like my understanding is just based on transistors and like kind of using like a binary system sort of the underlying circuitry for computers. So like very on off and using that as the basics for for logic gates. So I'm very curious what the answer for this is, Siri.

Can I guess? Can I guess? Yeah, I guess. Yes, but also there's no point to doing it. I think yes, but there are a vocal minority that will say that there's a reason to do it. So and in fact, a reason to do it. So, and in fact, we've already done it. So we have built computers that have not only been binary.

I think the classic way of thinking about computers, especially modern day computers are in base two. So either a one or a zero and on or an off and bits. And that is how a lot of our like modern computer circuitry works is programming that is built upon that concept and switches and whatnot. But the very first computer, the very first or one of the very first computers, ENIAC,

the electronic numeral integrator and computer, which was built between 1943 and 1945 and is the first like big large-scale computer actually was a decimal computer so it used 10 whole digits um which is like very funny it had 10 different vacuum tubes to represent the digits zero through nine and there are other computers too a lot lot of the other IBM early computers, like the IBM 650, IBM 1620, et cetera. The basic unit of data was a decimal digit instead of a binary digit, but also around, I guess, parallel timelines, but also sort of different timelines. We have built ternary computers, which are base three instead of base two.

What's the third one do? You can have balanced ternary, which uses the digits negative one, zero, and positive one, or just like minus zero plus. I think it's considered balancing because you go on either side of the zero. It can be used with polarized light, which can be polarized in various directions or be off. And then there's also unbalanced ternary, which uses zero, one, and two. So teaching computers about two.

And it uses zero as off, one as on, and then two as like everything else. It like makes less sense. It makes more sense to me to make like plus as on, minus as off, and then zero as everything else. It makes less sense. It makes more sense to me to make plus as on, minus as off, and then zero as everything else. But those are the two ways that ternary computers have been created. In 1840, a man named Thomas Fowler, who is a British mathematician, created a wooden calculating machine using ternary instead of binary or decimal or anything to count up. And the first ternary computer was in 1958 in Russia called the Setun, S-E-T-U-N.

And the US was also working on ternary computers around the same time. And the main reason we don't have more of them is because so many mass-produced transistors and circuit boards and computer pieces operate on binary. So it is the most popular thing. It is what a lot of programming languages, all the programming languages basically, I think, I always get nervous saying all,

but are built on binary. But the advantages of a ternary machine that people argue is that you can like pack more punch in a smaller package sort of. Because all of a sudden you have, instead of two states, you have three states that a switch can be in or whatnot. You have to redo the hardware and redo the programming a little bit to make it happen. You have to redo the hardware and redo the programming a little bit to make it happen. But a lot of like cybersecurity specialists, again, going back to encryption, are saying like a lot of the viruses and whatnot are programmed in binary, programmed to attack binary computers. And so if a select special computer was ternary instead, it would be a lot more secure. It be a lot safer for like five minutes i feel like i don't know this is like beyond the math that i know of but yes probably a hacker would be like a ternary computer sure i'll learn i feel like the the intersection of people who like ternary computers and people who like to make viruses is probably larger like we would want it to be in that situation but the other space that

people are exploring it is also extreme nerds and i say that with love is is like quantum computers so there's like quantum computers in binary so you have qubits in instead of just bits you have qubits because uh something about quantum like multiple states because quantum starts with qu and there yeah oh because yeah because quantum starts with qu but like the idea of a quantum bit as opposed to a bit i don't fundamentally understand in my brain i think a bit has like a zero or one but then when you layer quantum on it all ant-man style then there's like another state that it can be in because quantum involves some sort of like shifting stacking knowledge whatever but anyways quantum folks quantum computing folks

are also interested in ternary computers for that information storage and i think because quantum computers are so few and far between so there's a lot of space for that innovation as opposed to just like reusing the hardware that already exists so So yeah, so it's just like taking advantage of the fact of three states or a binary two state like on off and then the fuzzy middle that often exists in a lot of things, including electronics and computing. Is that the way it's going? You think there's going to be the three one? I mean, humans are really resistant to change. And unless there suddenly becomes like a big problem with binary computers, I bet we're going to stick with them. If you want to ask the Science Couch your question, follow us on Twitter at SciShow Tangents, where we'll tweet out topics for upcoming episodes every week, or join the SciShow Tangents Patreon and ask us on Discord.

Thank you to epalmer5002, lots of numbers in there, on Discord and at Fawn Thorn on Twitter and everybody else who asked us your questions for this episode. Deboki, thank you so much for being here with us. Where can people find more Deboki? So I'm on Twitter at okidoki underscore Boki. One of the best Twitter handles of all time, I would say. We'll say that to whoever has the actual okidoki boke without the underscore. But I'm still very mad I don't have it. And then I'm on Journey to the Microcosmos. I also co-host a podcast called Tiny Matters for American Chemical Society. So if you want more science things for me those are the two places mostly

to find me if you like the show and you want to help us out it's real easy to do that first you can go to patreon.com slash scishow tangents to become a patron and get access to things like our newsletter and our bonus episodes and special thanks to patron les acre and don't forget we're on a mission to hit 700 patrons and when we hit 700 patrons we'll do a minions movie commentary so we can learn more about how much urine they store in their bodies and how it makes you smarter if you smell it so if you haven't already become a patron at patreon.com slash scishow tangents and if you're already a patron tell your friends tell your mom tell your dad moms and dads love to subscribe to our patreon right sari my dad number fan, Garth Riley, supports me through Patreon to show his love.

Second, leave us a review wherever you listen. It's super helpful and it helps us know what you like about the show. And finally, if you want to show your love for SciShow Tangents, you can just tell people about us. Tell people about us. Terrific. Thank you for joining us. I have been Sam Schultz. I've been Sari Riley. I'm Deboki Chakrabarty. SciShow Tangents is created by all of us and produced by me, Sam Schultz. Our associate producer is Faith Evelyn Schmidt. Our editor is Seth Glicksman. Our story editor is Alex Billow.

Our social media organizer is Julia Buzz Bazaio. Our editorial assistant is Deboki Chakrabarty. Our sound design is by Joseph Tuna-Medish. Our executive producers are Nicole Sweeney and Hank Green. And we couldn't make any of this without our patrons on Patreon. Thank you. And remember, the mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be lighted. But one more thing. Number systems aren't just for counting and math. They can also be useful shorthand to categorize things like rock hardness, chemical acidity, or even the quality of your poop.

Specifically, the Bristol Stool Form Scale is a tool used by gastroenterologists. It ranges from type 1, which is severe constipation or rabbit droppings, according to a chart for kids, to type 7, which is severe and watery diarrhea or gravy, according to that same pediatrics chart. diarrhea, or gravy, according to that same pediatrics chart. A 2016 study actually found that the scale is really reliable in categorizing poop by number, but they add the caveat that shorthands always have their limits because it's tricky to draw lines between normal and abnormal bowel movements without more information just based on this chart. It's helpful to help you identify your poop, but is it helpful to identify your poop? You either have diarrhea or you don't have diarrhea. You have a bunch of

grapes or you have chicken nuggets. Yeah, but if you go to the doctor and say, I got chicken nuggets, they're going to say, that's within the realm of what I'm comfortable with. Tell me when you're not doing it or when you're only doing it, and then we'll talk. But what about my corn on the cob? That's the most normal one of all you can have, I'd say. I think sausage is. I think sausage is straight up in the middle. Smooth and soft. I'm learning a lot about what your guys' idea of normal is.

Well, Devoki, do you want to share? At the count of three, everybody say their number. One, two, three. Three. Five. Five. Five.