Bec tried to be a good person by doing the dishes. She left the hot water in the sink running for a good half an hour and properly flooded the entire kitchen.
Matt went to the European Robotics Foundation as light entertainment for nerds. He enjoys being out of his depth and desperately trying to follow along when maths nerds start talking.
Steve is engaged and the wedding will be in over a year. Similar to traditional gifts for positive wedding anniversaries, Steve now needs a gift for a negative wedding anniversary.
Bec denies getting distracted during, then explains Tibetan wedding traditions. The traditional gifts start in the mid to late 1800s in Germany. A bit later, the American National Retail Jewelers Association add more types of anniversaries. They change depending on who is trying to sell you something, though they're usually some material. Bec and Matt go through anniversaries in detail. On a semi-related note, Lucie and Matt celebrate their wedding anniversary every 500 days, and later this year will be the third anniversary of the podcast.
For the -1st anniversary, Bec suggests the opposite of diamonds, i.e. graphite (which, with a lot of pressure, will turn into diamonds). She has bought a block of drawing graphite and will send it to the pair. She also suggests ink as the 0th anniversary (i.e. wedding) gift.
A ding as a gift from Matt, on behalf of Steve and fiancee
How do I write a review for the podcast that helps you in any way if I do not have any Apple products? Google Podcast does not have this option, and I don't have an Apple ID.
Only 13.4% of listeners use Apple podcasts. 0.3% of people use Python requests, the 22nd most common way. The number 1 way people listen to the podcast is Spotify, so leave a rating there.
A Problem Squared on Spotify currently has a rating of 5.0 stars at 326 (edit: 327, Lauren voted live) reviews. A Podcast Of Unnecessary Detail has 4.9 stars at 399 reviews. No Such Thing As A Fish has 5.0 at 6.7k reviews.
A "I think we've well and truly dinged this problem" by Bec, combined with a Beardyman ding
After the episode, Bec got addicted to the problem as well. Listeners sent in their solutions. Some solutions didn't really count because lines crossed, or because people invented new symbols for numbers. Bec gives an honorable mention to Leo's 4 segment display, whose 4 looks like a 4.
Some people mentioned binary numbers and glorified lists. Some people mentioned what is essentially concatenating numbers. Some people mentioned matrices.
Finally, some people mentioned that you can't order an irrational number of dishes. If you assume all order quantities are rational, you can make all menu items irrational numbers, which is reversible. You can also use logarithms to turn the prime number product based solution from the original episode into an addition based solution. The only problem left is that you need to round the numbers or you can't write them down.
Finally, if you choose your irrational number very close to the price of the object, meaning the order number is also the price (up to rounding errors).
While Bec was cleaning up the cupboards from her flooded kitchen, she found a variety of snacks from around the world, which are stale Twisties alternatives. Bec tries one of them, but it isn't great.