A Problem Squared - 112 = Staring Safely At The Sun and Celebrations Off By One

Episode Date: June 23, 2025

🌞 How far away from the Sun do we have to travel before we can look at it without damaging our eyes?📆 Is there an off by one error with anniversaries?🍝 And AOB has been slow cooked and packed up in tupperware for safe storageThe starting point for Matt’s theory:https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-maximum-light-intensity-that-a-human-eye-can-withstand-without-being-damaged Astroid Mattparker: https://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/tools/sbdb_lookup.html#/?sstr=mattparker Distance to Voyager 1: https://science.nasa.gov/mission/voyager/where-are-voyager-1-and-voyager-2-now/ Here’s how to get involved with Matt’s Moon Pi Kickstarterhttps://www.kickstarter.com/profile/standupmaths If 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 to see Matt here:https://www.pleasance.co.uk/event/getting-triggy-it-matt-parker-does-mathsIf 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.

Hello and welcome to A Problem Squared, the problem solving podcast, which is a lot like batch cooking in that each portion provides enough tasty solutions to keep you satisfied for the next two weeks. Your hosts are Matt Parker, a mathematician, YouTuber and author who is like curry. Feeling spicy? Maybe. Sometimes you like hot stuff anyway. That is true. But has the capacity to stink up your kitchen. Hey! And myself, Beck Hill, a comedian, writer and presenter who is a bit like Bolognese. A crowd favourite, but I will ruin your Tupperware.

Yeah, yes. That's very accurate. Have you recently been batch cooking, Bec? Yes, that my first time. Oh, well done. Anyway, on this episode. I've got some advice for staring directly at the sun. I'm looking at an off by one error in anniversaries.

Ooh, excellent. And we have any other batch, any other batching. Matt. Bec. How are you? I'm good. Excellent. It's been all go back from Australia.

Yeah. I went and did my first real gig in a very long time. When was the last time you did a real gig? That's a great question. You're not counting an evening of unnecessary detail. No. Okay. Here's my definition of a real gig. So I went and did a spot at your favorite comedy club and mine, the Bill Murray. Yes. Run by the fantastic Angel Comedy People. And I'm classifying it as a real gig because I was not mentioned in any of the promotional material for this gig. I did not tell anyone I was doing this gig. No, not even me. Not even you. That was by accident. I live quite close by. That was collateral damage. Because I was speaking to the wonderful Barry Firms. You were, yeah.

Who was on and then- Who's running the gig, yeah. He mentioned it and I was like, oh, oh, I haven't seen Matt for over six months. But that's Chris for, that's all right. Almost to my house, Matt, I'm telling you. I mean, I'm busy anyway, I wouldn't have had time. No, I'm very sorry.

I rolled in, did the gig, hung around to do a podcast afterwards and then boom, out of there. But so the reason I'm classifying it as a real gig is it was in a small, perfectly normal comedy club. Mm-hmm. And no one had a clue who I was. Yeah. And the reason I'm doing this is because you and I, both doing the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

Mm-hmm. Massive comedy festival. Huge. Huge amount of festival. Huge. Huge amount of fun. Yep. And we'll have a lot of fun doing our shows. Everyone, please come and see them. Yes.

What's yours called again, Matt? Mine's called Getting Triggy With It. Nice. Matt Parker does the maths. Mine's called Guess Who's Beck? Beck Again, Beck Hill's Beck, Tell a Friend. There you go. You have the longest name. Yeah. And I actually do have Beck Hill at the very beginning of it officially. Beck Hill colon. Guess who's back. Yeah. So that people could find me alphabetically in the. Yeah. But that does mean that my name does

get mentioned five times in the title of my own show. Classic standup comedian. And I'm very excited about the show doing previews, be touring it afterwards. People buy tickets to all these things. But when you're at the Fringe, you get asked to go and do spots on other shows. Yes. And I've not done a show where I roll out in front of an audience of people who have no idea who I am. And I just have a comedy. And I've got to both entertain them and make sure everyone in that audience who would enjoy my actual show comes to see it.

Yep. So I thought I would book in a real gig so I could basically try and knock some edges off my stand-up and all that jazz. Yeah, because it is a perishable skill. Like if you're not doing it. Gosh, it is like exercising. Yeah, yeah. Oh, I felt that. I felt like I was going for a run for the first time. Yep. Having not run for years. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I did adequately. Yeah, I've had. I felt like I was going for a run for the first time. Yep. Having not run for years. Mm-hmm.

Yeah, I did adequately. Yep. I've had a few of those. Yeah. Oh, small gig, no one noticed. But I was on like after Alistair Beckett King. Mm-hmm. And like before Sean Walsh. Yeah. And I'm like, oh yeah, real low expectations from the audience just sliding in. The last time I did a gig at the Bill Murray. This is a great ad for the Bill Murray.

Oh, it's a really good place. The last time I did the gig that you did there, which is I think the social. Yes, the social club. Social club is called, I think Wednesdays. Yeah. Because quite often they will keep the headliner secret. Correct. And the last time I think I did a spot there, I was on in the middle section and the headliner was Aziz Ansari. Yeah. That's the risk. Yeah. And I was like, Oh, it's Tom Haverford. Yeah. That you do get a quality of act. Too good

a quality. And it makes you very aware. So I felt acute cue I reckon I would have done maybe fine in a different low expectation audience situation. Yeah yeah so it's fine. Real. I haven't got the machinery to concisely convey to a brand new cold audience who I am and what I'm doing. Yeah. I've gotten too used to having a rolling start, whereas a statistically significant amount of the audience knows who I am. And the thing is, I would say that as both a punter and a performer, I love a gig or show where you already, maybe you don't necessarily have like massive expectations per se, but where you already have context for that person.

Yes. Because it means you can kind of get into the meat of it, of why you're there more quickly, both as a performer and as an audience, you're already invested and that's half the battle. Oh yeah. And it's even like when I did a one-off gig at the Melbourne Comedy Festival, that was me hosting an event, but I still went out to do a bit of stand-up at the top with the audience. And that, you could argue, that's very similar. But that's like hundreds of people, but

there's different expectations at a gig like that. Because they're like, well, whoever's booked must be okay. Otherwise, they wouldn't be doing this. Yes. And they were kind of in for a nerdy-ish, variety night-ish thing. Yeah. And probably just enough people as I walked out went, oh, it's that guy from Numberphile and that's kind of funny. And that, great, blew the doors off that gig. This one, doors remain firmly attached throughout. Did you just sort of open it a little bit? No, no, I might have cracked a window. Oh, wow. You know when the audience is

not with you and you can just feel that inertia. Do you think later when people were talking about the gig, had they remembered you in the first place, they would say, they would refer to you as that maths guy. 100%. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now for the record, I got laughs. Like, it wasn't like...

Oh, I'm not saying, no, no, you said it was adequate. I didn't bomb, it was adequate. It was adequate. I didn't bomb. It was adequate I didn't embarrass myself all the institutions. Yeah, you didn't blow the roof off, but you also didn't just destroy the place No, I didn't ruin the vibe That's right I didn't go up there and suck on the atmosphere and leave with it. You neither sucked nor blowed I didn't do either of those things The pressure in the room was incredibly consistent.

How have you been? Yeah, good. I've also been doing previews and working on my show and everything like that. Yeah. It's my first time as well, doing a solo show since 2019. But I'm looking forward to it. I'd like the, I'm, I'm enjoying, I'm now in that zone where I'm starting to enjoy it. I'm having fun.

Yeah. I'm probably a couple of steps behind you. I'm just meta confident. Like I'm confident I'll be confident in the future. I should be working more on my actual show, not on my type 10 that I'd be doing on the side. I think it all helps. I think so.

How much has the show changed since you were doing it out in Australia? It has changed a fair bit. It's got more jokes. Oh, those? Okay. That's nice. That happens over time. Yep.

And the show is sort of reflective of where I'm at in my life. And I've already had like a bunch of things change. Yeah. It's been interesting trying to work out what to keep in the show. What feels authentic. What? All right. Cause the show was a snapshot in time. Yeah. And your life has already trundled on a bit since then. Yeah. Like for instance, I talk about sleeping on an air bed in the show. It's very funny. But I can't remember if I've said this on the, on, on the show. Uh, I, I am now going to be staying put in

the flat that I wrote. You got the flat. Yes, yes. And Gav is moving out. All these decisions arrived at the perfect time for both of us. Great timing, all round, very happy. So now I know where I'm living. And as soon as I realized, oh, I get to stay put, I was like, oh, well, I don't need an air bed anymore.

I can get a real bed. Did you burst it? Well, I then used it in my show. Great, great, great, used it in my show. Great. It's not much of a spoiler, but in the opening of my show, I manually inflate an air bed. And I used it in my last preview. But it's not a full double, but it's also bigger than a single.

And it's deep. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Modern air bed. A bigger than a single. Right. And it's deep. Yeah. Modern air bed. And a buoy was a tire. I'm going to have to get a smaller one. But now I'm like, Oh, do I talk about sleeping on an air bed now that I'm on a real bed? But it is funny. I still, yeah. You lived the air bed life. I lived the air bed life. You can still speak about it from a place of authenticity. Yeah. Thank you. Let's do a show, Matt. Thank you. Let's do a show, Matt. Our first problem comes from Steve.

Good old Steve. Good old Steve. Steve says, how far away from the sun would I have to travel before I can look at it without eye damage? Perfect. Yeah, I love it. Whole problem. Good question, Steve.

I like to think that this is a problem Steve comes up with all the time. I think she was a practical issue for Steve. Steve wakes up, looks right at the sun. Oh my eyes. This happens every day. I'm moving. Yeah, that's true. So, you're not allowed to look at the sun because it will damage your eyes.

Do you want to have a guess why? Ugly. The sun is very ugly. The sun is very ugly. The sun is real ugly. Is it to do with UV or radiation or something? Yes! Or, oh no wait, can I guess? Yeah.

Is it basically the same reason as like magnifying glasses? That is a hundred percent part of it. Like will you set the inside of your on fire? Yeah, you should have stopped a moment ago. So here's the thing. So the sun's very bright, but you don't blind yourself just by, like the sun being in the sky

and you look somewhere else in the sky. Cause we don't get blinded if we go outside. No. If the sunlight, it's only if you look directly at the sun. And that's what you're saying. That's the magnifying glass effect. And I think your eyes are substantially stronger than a magnifying glass. Like they're really good at focusing light. So you're okay.

Looking around the sun. If you look at the sun and it focuses it all in, that's when your eyeballs catch on fire. Sorry, that isn't very- You were trying so hard to not laugh and to look serious during that explanation. And at the end I was like, I'm just gonna make her laugh. It's just, it's very cartoon-like. Oh, my eyes! Flames. Just like little smoke that smoke coming out of it.

Yeah. You don't smell burning? Oh my eyes! Now, that said, that is slightly inaccurate. Sometimes I look at the sun, like, cause I like a sunset. You like a good sunset. I love a sunset. And that often does involve like trying to see where the sun is, the horizon, so I can

take photos. And so I'll do the squinty thing, I squint through my eyelashes and then I feel like it's okay to look at it. And we were just out in Australia on the West Coast, loads of sunsets over the ocean. Oh yeah. It's really nice. But after a while you're like, oh, we're looking at the sun. Like at that point though, it's going through a lot of atmosphere.

That's like the max of atmosphere. Is that why sunsets are okay to look at comparatively? Not ideal, but there's a lot being filtered out going sideways. If you're looking straight at the sun, like high in the sky, there's a lot less filtering, particularly in the visible. Your eye, and now I'm not a medical person what as they're called and a biology is not my strong suit mm-hmm so I'm also gonna mispronounce this and don't think this is medical advice there's a thing called solar retina pathy retina yeah retina

pathy retina pathy because retina rightinopathy? Because retina. Retina. Pathy. When you know your path, you're retina. And that's basically damage to your retina because you look at something too bright. Doesn't have to be the sun, can be other bright things as well. Historically, it's the sun, often during eclipses, because that's when people look at the sun. And even though the sun's largely covered by the moon, until it's fully covered by the moon, it's still too bright to look at. You're still going to damage. You know another time where a lot of people are looking at the sun's largely covered by the moon, until it's fully covered by the moon, it's still too bright to look at.

You're still going to damage it. You know another time where a lot of people are looking at the sun? When's that? In nativities. The sun of God. My goodness. You try and work with a professional. You should have specified what profession.

That's very true. Comedy was a terrible choice. Professional doofus. So, the, and you might think the reason you're going to damage your eyeballs looking at something too bright is going to be like the heat, the catching on fire, the angle. That's not the whole story. So it's a complicated process. And as well as just what they are calling photo thermal effects, you've also got photochemical and photo mechanical mechanisms that cause damage to the retina. And as far as I can understand it, the cells

detecting light, they release chemicals to signal what they're seeing. And if you hit them with that much light, they freak out and just dump all their signal chemicals all over the place. And that you actually like, no, poisons the wrong expression here, but you suddenly got this flood of chemicals that damages your retina. Oh, so it's like, if you just put a sheet of normal paper into a Polaroid camera, that won't work. Yep. But if it's got all the chemicals, if it's the right film, then it will, it'll hold onto that picture forever.

But too many chemicals at once will cause damage. So you're going to be able to see the sun forever. You basically just get a spot. But it's not even an after image. It's just you've burnt that part of your retina. But chemical burn, not heat burn. You can't get heat burn because you can get retina damage below energy or temperature levels that would cause thermal damage.

It can just be the signal of chemicals. Now for the most part, if you do damage your retina, it tends to heal over about six months. There's no cure. Sometimes it's permanent. Sometimes it will gradually heal. So best case, don't do it. Which is why Steve here, going to great lengths to avoid it. Yeah. So there's kind of the reason I looked this all up is I was like, okay, what am I trying to do to protect someone's eyes? Is it just the amount of energy that's going in? And that's not necessarily

true. It's just the amount of light as well that your retina's tuned to perceive. Because we've evolved on a planet with a star, like the Sun, that peaks in the kind of greenish range of frequencies, around 500 nanometers, I believe. And so life on Earth has evolved for that frequency. It's also the one that gets through the atmosphere, because we lose a lot of UV, most infrared, I think. We lose a bunch on the way through the atmosphere. But the stuff that gets through is the stuff we've been involved for our eyes to be sensitive to. So it's not a coincidence that the frequencies which would cause retinal damage because our eyes overreact also happens

to be the frequencies that the atmosphere doesn't filter out because that's the reason why we are sensitive to those frequencies. So it's a bit complicated when I try to work out, do I have to care about the fact that what we're going to do here for Steve to get further away from the sun, we have to leave the earth. Which means it doesn't have a filter anymore. Am I imagining we're going to put the Earth somewhere else? Is it just the light?

What is it? Because partly once you're outside the atmosphere, that's going to make a difference in terms of UV and infrared. Yeah. Question. I put my hand up. When astronauts on the ISS, or indeed anything further than the stratosphere. Is that where they are? Or they're above that?

They're above that. They're above that. They're low Earth orbit. They're not that far. They're no calculating pie on the moon. Anyone who's outside of the Earth's atmosphere, any windows on those spaceships. I like that spaceship. Yeah.

Craft. Full points wouldn't, well, space station or craft. Yeah, they're all good. They're going to have to have like lots of protective coating because of all of the radiation and everything. And if they're doing a EVA, an extra vehicle adventure, I assume that's what it stands for. Now, I don't recall ever seeing astronauts be like, ah, the sun from the windows? There's a very thin layer of gold and it filters out. Yeah, the gold visor or the gold tinting pretty much protects us, but back down to earth levels.

So you're probably, it's still not advisable to stare straight at the sun. Okay. So what I was trying to get at there is, is Steve in a spacecraft or, or just floating in space? Let's assume wherever Steve is, he's got the gold tinting so it's equivalent to being on Earth. Okay. Just to avoid that complication. Great.

So now I had the issue of how much of the energy light from the Sun do we get at the Earth? Mm-hmm. And how many times smaller would that need to be to get it right down to the point where it's safe. So I tried two methods. So one option was to look up safety regulations around lasers in the kind of visible range to work out what an acceptable amount of laser light is to be safe to the human eye and take that as my reference point and work out how much dimmer than the sun that is to then work out how much dimmer than the Sun that is, to then work out how far away it would need to be.

Ooh, okay. And it's hard to get exact numbers on this, because it's a different use case to looking at the Sun. I eventually found a standard IEC 60825 for laser safety, and I found a plot that had a couple different frequencies on it, one of which, to be fair, I found the plot on Quora, which is the worst place to find information, but then tracked it back to this standard. And roughly looking at it, you want to get about 0.001 watts per centimeter squared energy

from kind of visible light. OK. On your eye. And the sun very vaguely gives you point one three watts per square centimeter. OK. At Earth distances from the sun. So all I had to do was work out. Actually, it's an inverse square law. One way I could do it is to work out the effective sphere over which all the sun's energy is projected at the Earth's distance from it,

and then redo the calculation for further out. But everything scales as the inverse of the square. So what I actually do is just take the square root of the multiplier, and that tells me how much further out. It's a mathematical shortcut. Okay. I didn't understand any of it, but I liked how you described it and you moved your arm, so I think I understand. Yeah, I feel good doing it. The short version is if you want the roughly 13-ish fold reduction, 10 or so. This is called 10-fold reduction in light. That means you need to be about three times further out, because three squared is nine. It's a bit over three to be about three times further out because three squared is nine It's a bit over three to be about ten times further up

And so I then looked up now conveniently the earth is one astronomical unit out from the Sun. Yep, not by coincidence That's astronomers being lazy and We want to be about three Astronomical units out So Mars is not far enough. That's only one and a half So Mars is not far enough, that's only one and a half. Yep. Jupiter, too far. Five times further out.

Yeah. We want to go in the middle. Do you know what's in the middle between Mars and Jupiter? Is it the Kuiper Belt? That's further out, good guess though. But it's a belt, isn't it? It's a belt, it's an asteroid belt. Yep.

And do you know what's in the asteroid belt? No. Yeah. Is it the Matt Parker? Asteroid Matt Parker. Oh Yeah. Is it the Matt Parker? Asteroid Matt Parker. Oh my goodness. So it turns out, if Steve wants to get the sun down to save viewing, we'll vacay to Asteroid

Matt Parker. That's what you got to do, Steve. Wow. That's the place to be. That's what you should be, rather than doing your moon pie. You should be selling plots of land on the Matt Parker asteroid. Now I do need to say Steve, just so we're clear, asteroid Matt Parker is actually 2.4 astronomical units out. So actually you're only going to get a almost six fold reduction. That's probably enough.

I feel like the benefits of being on a throwing mat. Now you sound like a real real estate agent. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I'm sure it's fine. Little toasty. Yeah. I wouldn't look at it for too long. And because it's in that belt, is it going like around the sun? Yeah.

Yeah, it's not like. No, it's orbiting the sun, same as going to the sun. Yeah. So, and also, by the way, I was looking at figures for like thousands of seconds of exposure time. So maybe just don't look at it for, you know, a couple of minutes is enough. Yeah. Don't go, don't go, don't go tens of minutes.

You'll be fine. And now for completeness, I then did look up, you know, when there's a solar eclipse, you can get viewing glasses. Yes. Because you can get solar filters for telescopes and stuff, but that's different magnification to the human eye But there are glasses designed specifically for just putting in front of your eyes and staring at the Sun For an unlimited amount of time. Yeah, and I was like, okay Well, if these are designed to make it safe to look at the Sun with everything the Sun's giving off

I can look up how much they reduce the light by, and then you just go that far. Yeah. Maybe overkill. You don't get to go to Matt Parker. But those glasses are under standard ISO, back with our friends at the ISO. Ooh. ISO standard 12312-2,

standard for solar viewers. This standard states that solar viewers cannot let in more than 0.0032% of visible light. Okay. So I then worked out, well I took the square root of that, I worked out how far away you need to be from the sun. So if you looked at it, that's the amount of light you'd be seeing. And that can be achieved at a distance of 177 astronomical units. That's quite a bit further.

That's a lot further. That's roughly where Voyager 1 is. Right. And that's been traveling for quite some time. That's been going, that was launched in the 70s. Yeah. It's been going for a while. According to NASA, Voyager 1 is currently 167 astronomical units away, as opposed to

177 that we need. Right. Pretty much. Even the Voyager can't look at the sun directly just yet. Not just yet. It's probably safe, but it's not at the ISO standard level of safe. Yeah. So you've got to travel out for about 40 odd years.

Yeah. Yeah. It's going to take a while, Steve. Yeah. So you've got to travel out for about 40 odd years. Yeah. Yeah. It's going to take a while, Steve. Yeah. Voyager was launched in 1977. Yeah. So, so coming up, coming up on 50 years. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I reckon 50 years is the end. You have to go out 50 years, you know, Voyager style. Then you look back completely safe.

What's absolutely wonderful about that. And Lucy mentioned this when I explained what I was going to talk about. She's like, yeah, but that's outside the solar system because Voyager one has gone through the heliopause out of definition of the solar system. Right. Which is where the sun's magnetic influence ends and it hits the interstellar medium. So I don't know what any of that means, but it sounds brilliant. It's a long way away and it's outside the sun's magnetic influence. Okay.

And so it means to be safe enough to see the sun, you need to be outside the solar system before you can turn around and safely stare at it to ISO standards. It's almost as if the solar system has been designed to not let you look at the sun. That's not how you do this work. The sun is like, I will keep... I like what you're doing. I will keep you, you're allowed to orbit me, but don't look at me. The sun is, but it really is a star. That's, it is a real prima donna.

Yeah. That is as true as the eyeballs catching on fire analogy from earlier. I'm sticking with it. It's still good comedy. So there you are, Steve. Your choices are if you want to risk it, Asteroid Matt Parker. I mean, the difference is so... If you want to be safe, Voyager 1, and everywhere in between. Imagine. Practical advice. Buying a plot of land on Astro Mat Parker. I'm getting there somehow. I'm going to start filling land on Astro Mat Parker.

Yeah. I'm guessing it's, I'm guessing it's cold. Oh yeah. And so you do all of this and you're like, ah, finally, at least now I can look at the sun. Mat Parker! You've got the numbers wrong. Shh. That's the wrong part.

Well, I think that's, I think you've, somewhere in there, you've solved it. Somewhere in there. Yeah, yeah. I feel like I got some pretty generous error bars on where you need to be. I'm gonna give it a ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. That's the sound of one of those old fashioned fire engine. Oh, right. Yep, yep, that's the thing. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. That's the sound of one of those old fashioned fire engine. Oh, right.

Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. Next problem was sent in by someone named Rafael, who very kindly titled their problem. Made my menu item much easier. Yeah. They have written just off by one error in anniversaries question mark and then you're like, thanks. Yeah. Problem named. Yeah, thank you, Raphael. Now, Raphael's problem here is they're trying to convince their wife that they should celebrate their anniversary one day before the day we got married. Ah, great work. I love where this is going. So they have an example. Now this may or may not be true, but they claim they were married on the 2nd of March.

Why would you cast doubt on that? Well it starts with EG. So is that their actual wedding as an example? Or have they made up an example wedding? I think they're more saying like for example, our wedding was on this date. Yours probably isn't. That's very trusting of you. So Raphael's argument is let's celebrate that on the first. Raphael's wife disagrees. Raphael's arguments at the word anniversary comes from the Latin for year.

Doesn't imply a date, but a time period, as opposed to birthdays, which are more about the day themselves. Great argument. I feel like Raphael's arguing with himself in this, in this problem. So they think you should celebrate the completing of the year. Got it. They carry on.

To put it another way, if I say we'll do something every day for a week, and start on a Tuesday, they'll finish the following Monday, not on the following Tuesday. Okay, so they're getting examples. Now, Rafael, who may not be giving their wife They'll finish the following Monday, not the following Tuesday. Okay. So they're getting examples. Now, um, Raphael, who may not be giving their wife the most accurate airing of their arguments,

dedicate a whole sentence to it saying, meanwhile, my wife's arguments are tradition. That's how everyone does it. And please just be normal. Great joke structure there, Raphael. And they've asked if we could settle the debate, which Bec, you're going to do. Yeah, I'm sold. I'm on Raphael's side. Oh dang! That's why I chose this.

I'm going to go team wife then, just to keep this interesting. I could, but I'm too much of a pedant. I like this. I agree. This is, yeah, this, it shouldn't be on... Well, I hang on actually what I should specify. I I'm with both of them. My reason for that is that it depends how you celebrate. So it's fair enough to say that a wedding pretty much takes up a full day. Okay. Yes.

Yeah. So if your, if your wedding was like relatively early in the day, I'm going to count that as a full day, which means that like by midnight the night before. Right. I think you've got like the previous full day to celebrate. But I think if you had a past midday wedding, then you could only celebrate up until the point that you got married. Cause I would argue that you should celebrate at the point you got married. Cause that's exactly a year.

But then you go into the hour. I think it should go up until the point that you got married. Oh, so you're celebrating the arrival of it. Yeah. Or you could start celebrating then, because we just finished a whole year. Like you don't celebrate before you cross the finish line in a race. Yeah. You cross the finish line. That's the exact time when you got married.

Yeah. And then you celebrate. Yeah. I think it depends on the type of celebration. I do see the argument for the last day of the year. So I've got a wedding anniversary the last day of the year. So I've got a wedding anniversary coming up this month. Ooh.

Lucy and I, we will celebrate our 4,000 day wedding anniversary. Ooh. Which is very exciting. Yep. Thousand days wedding anniversary is the best. And that is using accounting system where we got married on like day zero. Mm-hmm. And then you have day one.

Yeah. And then two and then all the way up to 4,000 days. And so I think that's the superior way of doing it because that takes a lot of ambiguity out of it. Yeah. We do celebrate the 500 day in between points as well. Don't worry people. Okay. That's slightly, you know,

not as frequent as once a year. It's a year and a bit. So that's, that'll be my recommendation. Yeah. I do know what I was so sure when I went into this where I was like, yeah, it should be the day before. Yep. But then as I was trying to explain it, I convinced myself, well, no, because As I was trying to explain it, I convinced myself, well, no, because, no, because as the day you got, you started to get married on that day. But I, but I think if you want to be a pedant, I think it should be up until the point you got married. Cause then you've completed a full year. Okay. You're a celebrate as you approach the line and then stop when you get there. Yeah.

I'd be a celebrate once you're there and afterwards, Yeah. Which is not the argument Raphael's having. No. We were both on Team Wife. Yeah, because I've now flipped to Team Wife. Do you want, because you could even argue once you're passing the line, you can celebrate and go, yeah, it's now been a full year, doing it the next day, then it's like a year and a day and a bit, whatever. So up until midnight, but then you might as well just say it's that date.

Yeah. No, I'm, I'm now back on to see, I think, I think your wife's arguments that you've provided are incorrect. I don't believe in doing things for tradition or that's how everyone else does it, but I do think accidentally your wife is correct because if you celebrate the day before, unless you got married at midnight, going into your wedding day,

then you are celebrating too early. You haven't completed a full year yet. Celebration will never contact the year. Yeah, exactly, yeah. And that your argument was that it's a full year. Yeah. So, because I think we've had this chat before about, um, Yeah, we've had various issues with this thing.

Warranties or like return. So there was a story in Humble Pie about a mathematician called Jim Prop, who had a mobile phone contract where there was a return window. And the way the mobile phone company counted days was different to how regular humans would count days in basically exactly this situation. I forget if it was like a week or 10 days or something. Might have been two weeks. Jim got the phone, had two weeks to return it, brought it back within, strictly speaking, two weeks from the time he took the phone from the shop. Mm.

But because they counted that first day as one. Yeah. They counted it the day before the Rafael system. That's when they counted it as finishing by that same argument that Rafael is saying, if you say I'm going to do this for a week and you start on Tuesday, you'll finish on the following Monday, not the following Tuesday, because you've done a week. Yeah. That counts. That means you need to cut the following Monday, not the following Tuesday. Cause you do, you've done a week. That counts.

That means you need to cut the entirety of the first day of it. They're also different things. Like if you say, oh, I'm going to do something every day for a week, that is an action that you are repeating each day. So that makes it, you're doing seven actions over seven days. But an anniversary isn't an action. Like in that sense, it is a celebration of the completion of something. Yeah. That's why I think you celebrate after you cross the line. This is a classic Beck thing. I come in so, the hubris I have is so strong. Yep. And I come in, but I will say that I am, while I am very hubristic, I think that's a word.

I mean, you would think that. Yeah, exactly. I am as just as humble as I am hubristic because I will back down. Oh, you do. Oh, yeah. With such ver- You will not dig in. You'll be like, oh, oh, you know what? Yeah. No, you won't.

You'll give it a moment and then you'll be, oh, yeah, maybe yes, yes. No, I'm staunchly correcting myself and I've properly, I don't think there's anything wrong with flip-flopping, but I will say that it is teaching people not to trust my first instinct. Ah, no, it's just, you know, I think it's a better role model for updating your beliefs when things change. Yeah, thanks. Wow. So you've settled the debate for him.

You've lived both sides of the debate. Yeah. You embodied the entirety of this debate and you agree with Raphael's wife. I mean, technically I agree with neither of them. Marriage is a construct, no point celebrating, but sure. Oh yeah, but that's, there's more to unpack there than we can in one podcast. Love is an action, not an achievement.

I hope that they continue to find joy in debating this. I hope so. Now who needs to ding it? Do we need Raphael or Raphael's wife to adjudicate on if we're going to do this one? I guess we need both. We need both. I need to agree on something. Yeah. Have we managed to convince either of you? Okay. Have we, have we accidentally been marriage counselors? Wouldn't it be great if, if we've managed to get either one of them to agree with the other, that's prolonging their marriage.

Yeah. That's prolonging the amount of anniversaries they get to celebrate. Yeah. You're welcome. Or they will continue to argue and divorce and they never have to worry about anniversaries they get to celebrate. You're welcome. Or they will continue to argue and divorce and they never have to worry about anniversaries again. Yeah. Keeps things spicy. And in any other business or any other batchness, we're still doing a batch cooking theme. I've always forget that. Yeah.

I would like to use any other batchness to just re-promote our Edinburgh Festival Fringe shows. Thanks, Matt. Please come and see both of us. You can see us both. You can on the same night. No, because we clash. Yes.

So very sad. Can't see you show, but you can see us on consecutive nights at the Fringe. In my case, you can go to standupmass.com slash shows. And in Bec's case, you can go to the Gilded Balloon website. I think I get slightly more ticket money if you, if you book the tickets through the Gilded Balloon website. Yeah. I get more money if you go via, um, Pleasance than if you go via the Fringe. Yeah. We'll make sure those are the links in the show notes. Yep. Mine is at seven o'clock at Goodel Balloon Appleton Tower. That's guess who's back back again, back us back to the friend.

And I, I'm only doing a part run. I'm doing, I think the last three weeks or two and a half weeks. Sorry. So from the 9th of August. So don't run up there too quickly. You might miss me. I'm there the whole time. Specifically, I'm at six 30 in Pleasance courtyard at

Pleasance beyond doing getting tricky with it. And then I'm on tour afterwards. Yes you are. So if you go to senatemass.com slash shows, you will get all the tour shows. I've only announced the first nine that'll be in the autumn, but there'll be more to come. Come and come and it'd be a lot of fun. Yeah. After every show, I'll be around to sign calculators.

As always. Yeah. Look, I will sign calculators after my show. If you want, I wouldn't recommend it. Tupperware. I'll sign you Tupperware. I don't know why. With Bolognese.

That's so orange. Now back on to our other any other business we we heard from Yes, that old guy. Oh, Dice Guy. Yes. Posed the problem about Dice in episode one, one zero. They said, ding. Do you like the answer? Great.

They said, however, yes, that old guy is actually formatted in Paschal case, not camel case. That's true. And I have noticed that when they've spelt out Paschal case, it's one word, but with the P and the C capitalized. Yep. When, yes, that old guy says camel case, I've noticed that camel is lower case, but the C in case is uppercase.

Now this makes sense. It's got one hump in the center. Camel case technically doesn't have the first character capitalized. Right. I use it as a catchall for all of these no spaces, but capitalization to... I would call that... As do a lot of people. Bumpy case.

Some people call it bumpy case. Roller case. That's just Beck. Roller case is very good. And I would say most people just call everything camel case for this. But technically, in the same way that people are like, technically, it's a die, not dice. Camel case doesn't include where you capitalise the first letter. And I thought at the time I thought that and I was like, it's one thing too many. And I couldn't remember what you call it when you do capitalise the first letter.

But yes, that old guy has confirmed it's Pascal Case. Named after Pedro Pascal. Yeah, named after Pedro Pascal. Pedro Pascal Case. Yeah. So there you are. Technically Pascal Case. Every day is a school day. They also got to say, I really like the idea of shaving down an ice cream cone. I might go that way. Thanks.

Oh, and for the record, yes, that old guy is not the only person who pointed out it's technically Pascal Case, not Camel Case. So thanks to everyone else who chipped that in. Yes, someone else pointed out Snake Case is when you've got an underscore in between. Oh, I've not heard that. And Kebab Case is when there's a dash, when there's a hyphen between it. Oh, that's lovely. Although there's no, I'm noticing no capital letters in either of those.

So I don't know how I feel about that. Speaking of that particular episode, we also heard from Dr. Wen or Dr. Wen, W E double N. And they've just immediately started with credentials. Mathematician who collects dice and grew up in Las Vegas. Great. Love it.

Re dice balancing. They say casinos balance their dice by filling in the pips with a different colored, but equal density material. Yep. A few people wrote in to say that. Yeah. So yeah, love it. But Dr. Wayne goes on. Re fair distribution of numbers. Oh yeah. One reason to prefer distributions that balance the average value around each vertex is to foil sneaky dice rollers, who can throw dice in a way, spinning them, that biases one part of the die over another.

You can also fight this the way casinos do, by requiring that the dice bounce off a bumpy wall. The old angular momentum method. Yeah, I was not aware of this. I don't go to casinos enough. I think we covered this very slightly, talking about shapes of dice, where if there's a preferential axis of rotation or bias, certain regions or bands, I guess. They finally say re dice in quotations versus die as a singular.

While I feel like things would be a lot less confusing if we all used dice instead of die as the singular, I don't think that we've quite achieved that yet. Oh what? A quick search of the BYU web corpus. Do you know what that means, Matt? No, but the web corpus would just be a massive database of text scraped off the web. Producer Laura says it might be Brigham Young University in Utah. Who knows? Who knows? Who knows? text scraped off the web. Producer Laura says it might be Brigham Young University in Utah.

Who knows? Who knows? Who knows? All I'm saying is, I'm saying DICE as a public figure to try and balance those odds a little. And all I'm saying is, I'm very happy with- You don't care. No, I'm very happy with the other things that Dr. Wen said. Yep. I find that very useful.

No, I'm very happy with the other things that Dr. Wen said. I find that very useful. I also think everyone who is providing a solution, which we didn't necessarily ask for. And there are some good ones in there. They're great. I don't want to discourage anyone from doing this. We've got a lot of interesting things that relate to probability. I don't want to discourage anyone from doing this, but I think there should be a new rule set that if you are going to do it, you should start your solution with credentials. And tell us why. Why you're bringing this to the table. Yeah. Cause if you're,

if you're just having a guest like we are credentials, start your own podcast. What about it? Yeah. We have a monopoly on having an uneducated guess. We don't need to outsource that. Because I genuinely love a lot of the answers that people send us and I'm always amazed. I still always come to my mind when I thought I'd solve the problem about whether you could fly a plane on the Autobahn and got such great answers back. So yeah, I don't want to put anyone off, but I would love your credentials. Speaking of the listeners and how grateful for you we are.

First of all, if you want to help the show, tell people to listen. It's really useful. Well, most people come here from word of mouth. You can talk about it on your various social medias or Slack channels, discords, wherever you are, tell folks to listen to a problem squared. And if you are in a position to help us financially, please sign up for our Patreon, patreon.com

forward slash a problem squared. Correct. There is a link in the show notes as well, just to make it easy. We could only keep this running through our Patreon supporters. Uh, otherwise we cannot justify doing it. So we really appreciate your help. And if you do support us on Patreon, there are many ways in which you are repaid as well as getting access to this podcast with no ads, a sense of smugness, But also you'll get access to our free bonus podcast. I'm a wizard amongst other things.

And on each episode we choose three of our Patreon supporters at random and thank them by mispronouncing the names that they've given us. And on this episode, those Patreon supporters are... B I O Mewinnie. I'm looking forward to this one. Eeyore! That's accurate, that's accurate. Okay, everyone take 10 seconds to see if you can guess the name.

And the correct answer was John. Can we hear that again please back? Ian! Matt Hias. Matt Hias. Hias are Matt. That's what it's short for. Or Hias!

Hias! I'd also like to thank my co-host, Matt Hias Parker. Bless me. Who continues to sustain me like a thawed out, heated. Back to the theme. Prepared meal and to the recipe that helps us put it all together and make sure that it's working and is healthy and well balanced. Producer Laura Grimshaw. And I've been back hill. Goodbye. What's your move? What's my move? As if, as if we don't know.

Oh, I'll just move that right now. And let me guess. F6. That is correct. Hit. I knew it. But no, not with a sinking sound. Hmm. Fascinating.

Now, I had a system until I've realized you've clumped multiple boats up against each other. You've gone ship to ship. So I feel like I need to exhaust the perimeter of the ship mass. So can I have an E6? Oh, miss.

Oh, a real grumbly miss. Interesting.