120 = Dealing Probability and Healing Gullibility
🃏 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 Okt 1h 8min
119 = Proportions by Bananas and Polygons from Lava
🍌 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 Okt 54min
118 = Rolling Eyes and Juggling Highs
🎲 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 Sep 56min
A Problem Squared - Emergency Episode!
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 Sep 19min
117 = Visualising Hacks and Unusual Icy Snacks
👁️ 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 Sep 53min
116 = Guess The Right Price and Why Teeth Might Splice
￡ What’s the optimum strategy to win The Price Is Right?🦷 Why have Tim’s baby teeth fallen apart?🛠️ And there’s some Any Other Billy Bookcase BusinessHead to our socials to play along with The Price Is Right and to see a video of Ikea Wars!Here are the GIANT LETTERS sent in by Phillip:https://maps.app.goo.gl/yZaofcfNPaF5HyX17https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillside_lettersIf you’re in Edinburgh for the Fringe, get tickets to see Bec here:https://tickets.gildedballoon.co.uk/event/14:5884/And get tickets see to Matt here:https://www.pleasance.co.uk/event/getting-triggy-it-matt-parker-does-mathsHere’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.
18 Aug 51min
115 = Jolly Good Euphemising and Hollywood Sign Sizing
🍆 What’s the “female equivalent” of phallic? What’s the font size of the Hollywood sign?🦈 And we’re always open for AOBusinessThanks to our excellent experts appearing in voicenote form - Dr Ben Whittle, Chella Quint OBE, and Linus Boman.Daan’s paper in the American Journal of Archaeology which cites this very podcast: doi.org/10.1086/735650 The world’s largest enlarged letter: https://www.pleasedonotbend.co.uk/categories/world-recordIf you’re heading to the Edinburgh Fringe, you can get tickets to see Bec here: https://tickets.gildedballoon.co.uk/event/14:5884/And you can get tickets see to Matt here: https://www.pleasance.co.uk/event/getting-triggy-it-matt-parker-does-mathsHere’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.
4 Aug 55min
