Matt is back from Australia, and the two hosts are recording in the office again. Lauren is not there because she has covid.
Pi has been calculated to 100 trillion digits by a Google developer who has already held the record once in the past. The digits take 515 TB of storage, and the calculations took 157 days, 23 hours, 31 minutes, 7.651 seconds.
The art exhibition happened, but the T-shirt did not sell. The minimum bet was £5K. Bec also exhibited and sold some more pun-based art pieces in the exhibition.
Is there a way to number a menu where giving the total will result in a correct order?
There is no perfect system that scales arbitrarily. If you cap the number of individual dishes per order, you can number your dishes 1, 10, 100 and so on (other bases are also available), but this feels a bit like cheating. Matt gives Bec a menu and Bec orders from it.
Another approach might be using complex numbers, but Matt couldn't make it work. Matt suspects there must be some mathematical objects where you can reverse the addition losslessly. Matt asks listeners for any such objects.
Finally, if you use multiplication, you can just give each item a different prime number and exploit prime number decomposition. If Matt was running a café, he'd call it "The Rows and Column" and he'd use punch cards for orders.
Bec only gives this a half ding, or rather, a single Law & Order "dung".
When there is somebody behind you when you open the door, what is the polite distance to wait for someone, and what is the creepy distance to wait for someone?
If you go into a building and it isn't very clear that the other person wants to go in as well, don't hold it open. It depends on how they're approaching the door, and if they do a little skip, that's a universal sign they want to go in. Maybe tie your shoelaces to buy some time.
If you're coming out of a room or building, use two lengths of the other person as the cutoff. However, if the person can't easily open the door (e.g. holding lots of stuff), use eye contact instead.
If the door is a security door, don't hold the door open for anyone unless it's clear they also belong. Maybe even pull the door closed if it's unclear. This is also how you can infiltrate high security places.
If the door is an elevator door, if you're alone, you hold it open. If there's multiple people, it's a space/capacity tradeoff. In a full elevator, don't hold it open. Matt suggests pretending to press the doors open button, though Bec notes it just looks like you're pressing the doors close button.
Revolving and automated doors don't require any action. Drawbridges might not count as doors. ISS air locks might also require special handling.
If you're a creepy person, any distance is the creepy distance. Don't hold doors open and stop being creepy. Otherwise, if you'd use the door anyways and the person you're holding it for is aware of you, it's not really creepy. When in doubt, just let it close.
The first ever live recording of A Problem Squared will happen at bluedot festival, which happens from 2022-07-21 to 2022-07-24. Until then, listeners with problems for a live audience are encouraged to enter them in the Problem Posing Page.
People wrote in regarding how falling through the Earth would feel. On Twitter, @murkee said "Physicist here, it'd be freefall all the way." They've also pointed out the Earth's density is not uniform. Someone else pointed out that while falling, there'll be a gravity gradient over your body, but Matt suspects it won't be noticeable. Bec suspects that in any scenario, you'd hit the wall and hurt yourself.
In an episode of the bonus podcast I'm A Wizard, the question came up whether Australia is the only country where some parts do daylight savings and some don't. Marcel wrote in on the Problem Posing Page to note that Canada has the same problem.
Matt shows Bec the four of spades, which is her card! Matt brings party bag twisties to celebrate. The card will be sold on Ebay for £5K.