A Problem Squared

🍟 Why does the nutritional value of frozen chips change depending on whether they are cooked in an air fryer or in an oven?⛰️ How large a mountain could we make from 2.2 meters of dredged sea bed (combatting sea level rise in the process)?🃏And there’ll be some AOB, as easy as 123.Head to our socials for pics of LIVE MATHS, chip nutritional values, post-Totoro Bec, ESA Souvenirs.If you’d like to ask Matt and Bec anything for our special 2^7 episode in February go to the Problem Posing Page at aproblemsquared.com - select ‘Problem’ and start your message with AMA!See Matt on tour in 2026! http://standupmaths.com/shows Here’s how to get involved with Matt’s Moon Pi Kickstarter:https://www.kickstarter.com/profile/standupmaths And here’s how to volunteer for Calculate Pi By Hand with Matt: https://forms.gle/w44THpNJ3jWUPqHy6Join us on Patreon for early releases and our monthly bonus podcast I’m A Wizard. If you’re already on Patreon and have a creative Wizard offer to give Bec and Matt, please comment on our pinned post!  If you want to (we’re not forcing anyone) please do leave us a review, share the podcast with a friend, or give us a rating! Please do that. It really helps. Finally, if you want even more from A Problem Squared you can connect with us and other listeners on BlueSky, Twitter, Instagram, and on Discord.

8 Joulu 56min

🔥 How many quickfire problems is it possible to solve in a single episode of A Problem Squared? 🧑‍💼 Why is Matt dressed like a maths teacher?🃏And we will deal out some Any Other BusinessIf you’d like to ask Matt and Bec anything for our special 2^7 episode go to the Problem Posing Page at aproblemsquared.com - select ‘Problem’ and start your message with AMA!A chicken slapping machine - click to view at your own riskhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68L6JA_CnmUHere’s where you’ll find the video of Matt in 374 different outfits (and the 375th outfit is on our socials)https://www.youtube.com/@standupmaths/videos From AOB here’s Chris’ working…https://chrisboettner.github.io/blog/posts/2025-10-28-card_game_blog.html…and here’s Dede’s working…https://github.com/dedebenui/cardgame See Matt on tour!http://standupmaths.com/shows Specifically, see Matt in London on Monday 1st December!https://lwtheatres.co.uk/whats-on/matt-parker/ Or if you would like to see Bec in Brighton on Monday 1st December, tickets are here:https://www.komedia.co.uk/shows/john-luke-roberts-geoffrey-chaucers-mediaeval-christmas-festivitye/Here’s how to get involved with Matt’s Moon Pi Kickstarter:https://www.kickstarter.com/profile/standupmaths And here’s how to volunteer for Calculate Pi By Hand with Matt: https://forms.gle/w44THpNJ3jWUPqHy6Join us on Patreon for early releases and our monthly bonus podcast I’m A Wizard. If you’re already on Patreon and have a creative Wizard offer to give Bec and Matt, please comment on our pinned post!  If you want to (we’re not forcing anyone) please do leave us a review, share the podcast with a friend, or give us a rating! Please do that. It really helps. Finally, if you want even more from A Problem Squared you can connect with us and other listeners on BlueSky, Twitter, Instagram, and on Discord.

24 Marras 51min

🗓️ Does bi-weekly mean every two weeks or twice a week?🧊 What is the name of the line between two opposing corners of a cube?🕑 And daylight will be saved with some Any Other Brightness.For more on Rupert and Nopert Shapes:Euler Brick: https://mathworld.wolfram.com/EulerBrick.htmlTom7 - Rupert's Snub Cube and other Math Holes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QH4MviUE0_sTom7’s Print files for Platonic, Archimedean and Catalan Solids: https://makerworld.com/en/models/1617011-platonic-archimedean-and-catalan-solids#profileId-1706419Follow Dr Ben Whittle, The Excellent Etymologist, on Instagram! @schnebwhittleJoey Parrish and his Sega Slides https://github.com/joeyparrish/sega-slidesSee Matt on tour! http://standupmaths.com/shows Specifically, see Matt in London on Monday 1st December! https://lwtheatres.co.uk/whats-on/matt-parker/ Or if you would like to see Bec in Brighton on Monday 1st December, tickets are here: https://www.komedia.co.uk/shows/john-luke-roberts-geoffrey-chaucers-mediaeval-christmas-festivitye/Here’s how to get involved with Matt’s Moon Pi Kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/profile/standupmaths And here’s how to volunteer for Calculate Pi By Hand with Matt: https://forms.gle/w44THpNJ3jWUPqHy6Join us on Patreon for early releases and our monthly bonus podcast I’m A Wizard. If you’re already on Patreon and have a creative Wizard offer to give Bec and Matt, please comment on our pinned post! If you want to (we’re not forcing anyone) please do leave us a review, share the podcast with a friend, or give us a rating! Please do that. It really helps. Finally, if you want even more from A Problem Squared you can connect with us and other listeners on BlueSky, Twitter, Instagram, and on Discord.

10 Marras 51min

🃏 What are the odds of actually winning Morgan’s very specific, very fun card game?🤯 Are people more gullible now? And what are the best ways to persuade someone they are wrong?👻 And, appropriate to the season, there will be some Any Other BoooooooooooooosnessIf you have some ingenious suggestions of what Matt can do in lunar gravity, head to www.aproblemsquared.com and submit your idea as a ‘Solution’Head to our socials to see Matt’s graph plot and stats on the odds of winning the card game, as well as Bec’s beautifully laid out existence proof of the 52 Card Game!Some further reading on The Gullibility Problem:Why are people so gullible? https://www.bbc.co.uk/future/article/20160323-why-are-people-so-incredibly-gullibleResearch paper on political extremism: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0956797612464058Nobel Disease: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Nobel_diseaseAnd some tetrahedron-shaped packaging - or TetraPaks, if you will:TetraPak: https://www.tetrapak.com/solutions/packaging/packages SunnyBoys: https://australianfoodtimeline.com.au/2016-goodbye-sunnyboy/ See Matt on tour! http://standupmaths.com/shows And if you want to see Matt in London on Monday 1st December, tickets are here: https://lwtheatres.co.uk/whats-on/matt-parker/Or if you want to see Bec in Brighton on Monday 1st December, tickets are here: https://www.komedia.co.uk/shows/john-luke-roberts-geoffrey-chaucers-mediaeval-christmas-festivitye/Here’s how to get involved with Matt’s Moon Pi Kickstarter:https://www.kickstarter.com/profile/standupmaths And here’s how to volunteer for Calculate Pi By Hand with Matt: https://forms.gle/w44THpNJ3jWUPqHy6If you’re on Patreon and have a creative Wizard offer to give Bec and Matt, please comment on our pinned post!  If you want to (we’re not forcing anyone) please do leave us a review, share the podcast with a friend, or give us a rating! Please do that. It really helps. Finally, if you want even more from A Problem Squared you can connect with us and other listeners on BlueSky, Twitter, Instagram, and on Discord.

27 Loka 1h 8min

🍌 Is there a more consistent system of measuring things (and is it ‘Banana For Scale’)?🌋 Why and how do hexagons occur in nature?🔔 And there will be a whole Bec of Any Other BecnessHead to our socials to see Matt and Bec playing The Metre Game, lots of bananas for scale, and Matt sporting some very fetching headwear.Some further reading on the origins of ‘Banana For Scale’:https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/banana-for-scale Some further reading on hexagons in basalt:European Geoscience Union article:https://blogs.egu.eu/divisions/ts/2023/05/26/features-from-the-field-columnar-basalts-and-why-hexagons-are-natures-favourite-shape/Physical Review Letters: https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.115.154301See Matt on tour!http://standupmaths.com/shows Here’s how to get involved with Matt’s Moon Pi Kickstarter:https://www.kickstarter.com/profile/standupmaths And here’s how to volunteer for Calculate Pi By Hand with Matt:https://forms.gle/w44THpNJ3jWUPqHy6If you’re on Patreon and have a creative Wizard offer to give Bec and Matt, please comment on our pinned post!  If you want to (we’re not forcing anyone) please do leave us a review, share the podcast with a friend, or give us a rating! Please do that. It really helps. Finally, if you want even more from A Problem Squared you can connect with us and other listeners on BlueSky, Twitter, Instagram, and on Discord.

13 Loka 54min

🎲 What are the odds of rolling snake eyes? (And does it make for good TV?)🤹How long does it take to learn to juggle with seven balls?🛌 And there’s some Any Other Bed’n’BoardnessHead to our socials to see Matt and Bec in action, rolling dice and juggling balls!To find out more about our juggling expert Darryl J Carrington, head to his insta: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DPTqhTwDEeb/?igsh=MXdyMDJvNGhma2ZtNg==And here’s Colin Wright’s video about Sideswap: “Juggling by Numbers - Numberphile” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7dwgusHjA0Y Here are Jasper’s links (in Dutch and in English) about the Belgian family and their children’s themed nameshttps://vrtnws.be/p.NvjDVZw5w  (Dutch)  https://www.reddit.com/r/tragedeigh/comments/17h7ka6/gwenny_32_is_pregnant_of_a_twelfth_child_a/ (English)  And here are the visualised shuffles of the card question in Episode 113Tom - https://tehtommeh.github.io/riffle-me-this/Bernhard - https://www.bernhard-werner.de/assets/cindy/applets/card_weave.htmlShaun - https://svermaak.github.io/VisualiseCardShuffle/ See Matt on tour!http://standupmaths.com/shows  Here’s how to get involved with Matt’s Moon Pi Kickstarter:https://www.kickstarter.com/profile/standupmaths  And here’s how to volunteer for Calculate Pi By Hand with Matt: https://forms.gle/w44THpNJ3jWUPqHy6 If you’re on Patreon and have a creative Wizard offer to give Bec and Matt, please comment on our pinned post!  If you want to (we’re not forcing anyone) please do leave us a review, share the podcast with a friend, or give us a rating! Please do that. It really helps.  Finally, if you want even more from A Problem Squared you can connect with us and other listeners on BlueSky, Twitter, Instagram, and on Discord.

29 Syys 56min

Unfortunately, Matt has been ill and lost his voice so we were unable to record the episode that should be coming out this week.To make up for it, we are releasing an episode of the usually-Patreon-only I Am A Wizard for you to listen to. It's the one from April this year and features a magical offer from our listener who is, apparently, a wizard - USBinPRL. But we begin with a message from Bec, who can still speak.If you want more wizarding silliness then join our Patreon at patreon.com/aproblemsquared - you'll get access to all the past episodes of I Am A Wizard, a new wizard episode every month, and early access to all episodes of A Problem Squared!Normal Service will be resumed in Two Weeks!

15 Syys 19min

👁️ How do you remember things if you can’t visualisethem in your mind’s eye?🍭 What’s the best shape for a freeze pop?🪣 And there’s some Any Other Beachness  Head to our socials to see freeze pop pics, Matt(not that one)’s tooth and the AOB gifts!  Here’s a link to the University of Exeter’s The Eye’s Mind project: https://blogs.exeter.ac.uk/eyesmind/   And here’s a selection of freeze pops and anti-prisms…https://www.sainsburys.co.uk/gol-ui/product/del-monte-quality-pineapple-freeze-pop-8-x-62mlhttps://www.vimto.co.uk/vimto-range/product/vimto-pyramids/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square_antiprismhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disphenoid  See Matt on tour! http://standupmaths.com/shows/  Here’s how to get involved with Matt’s Moon Pi Kickstarter:https://www.kickstarter.com/profile/standupmaths  And here’s how to volunteer for Calculate Pi By Hand with Matt: https://forms.gle/w44THpNJ3jWUPqHy6 If you’re on Patreon and have a creative Wizard offer to give Bec and Matt, please comment on our pinned post!  If you want to (we’re not forcing anyone) please do leave us a review, share the podcast with a friend, or give us a rating! Please do that. It really helps.  Finally, if you want even more from A Problem Squared you can connect with us and other listeners on BlueSky, Twitter, Instagram, and on Discord.

1 Syys 53min