Good Job, Brain! - 77: You're My Number One

Episode Date: September 5, 2013

Chris discovers the magical and mystical properties of the number nine, and Karen finds mathematical shapes in videogames, snacks, and Las Vegas. Learn a whole lotta nothing... uh... we mean zero! E.L.V.I.S. is back with another quiz - this time with numerically-titled songs. And find out the history and reasoning behind your phone number. And please excuse my dear aunt Sally, and not because she farted, but because she forgot all the silly math mnemonics from elementary school! ALSO: 1960's Jeopardy! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to an airwave media podcast. Welcome, well-wishers, well-doers, and whiz kids. Welcome to Good Job Brain, your weekly quiz show and Offbeat Trivia podcast. This is episode 77, and of course, I'm your humble host, Karen, and we are your pensive podcasting pals partial to palindromes, paradoxes, and piranhas. Oh, you seem out of breath. Thank you, pop filters. I'm Colin.

I'm Dana. And I'm Chris. And let's jump into our general trivia segment. Pop quiz, hot shot. Hold up. I'm going to do it. Hold up. Wait a minute.

Really? All right. Yes. Record scratch. Well, on the way here to Collins, I stopped by at flea market and found something amazing that I thought was really going to be great for good job, brain. is an old 1960s board game edition of Jeopardy. Wow.

Yes, this predates even Alex Trebek. Wow. This board game was in basically brand new condition. It was all shrimp crap inside. I could not believe the shape. Yeah, yeah, you say the things hadn't even been opened up inside. Yeah, so we broke the shroom crap. We have here questions from 1960s Jeopardy.

And I've picked out a couple of categories. Some of these questions are going to be dated. and no longer correct. Hilariously so. And some of them are going to call on knowledge that you could not possibly be expected to know. However, we're going to do it anyway. Okay.

At least when we had our 80s trivia cards, at least we can kind of pretend to be in that mindset because we were either born or we're alive in the 80s. This, I don't know. This I'm not so sure. You have to channel your inner Dondraper to try to get through this. I need a drink first. Give me a martini.

The category is journalism. So for $100, in the newspaper industry, word for a personal credit. Colin. Is that the byline? A byline. What is a byline? What is a byline? Henceforth, remember to answer in the form of a question.

Here we go. The two leading news services. Colin. What are the AP? The Associated Press and the UPI. Yes, you're absolutely right. I was going to guess Reuters. What is UPI?

UPI is United Press International and it used to be. It's still around, but it's very, very small and just sort of does little things now. But it used to be as big as the AP. Wow. As the Associated Press, which is still as big as it was. The answer is now Gawker and TMZ. Midwestern City that publishes the Plain Dealer. What?

Colin. What is Cleveland? What is Cleveland? Yes, yes, indeed. What is that? The Cleveland plane dealer is a newspaper. P-L-A-I-N. Yes.

Not airplane. Oh, oh. I was thinking like Boeing. Like Skymall? Cleveland Aviation News and General Interest publication. It's really specific. For 400 real dollars. The answer is, the New York Times famous motto.

The New York Times famous motto. Very well known, Dana. What is all the news fit to print? Yes, all the news that's fit to print. Oh, that was very snappy. And for $500, its last page used to be called Speaking of Pictures, dot, dot, dot. Karen.

What is USA Today? It is not USA Today. I don't think that existed then. It may not ask. Speaking of pictures. What is Life magazine? What is Life magazine? That's it.

Yep. Which ceased publication actually in the year 2000. It was a monthly for a while there. It held on. It really did. It used to be an American institution, and now it is nothing. Okay, let's go to Double Jeopardy. The category is Food for $200. Contents of the lower half of a double boiler.

Karen. What is water? What is water? Exactly, yes. Occupational hazard of a prize fighter. Karen. What is cauliflower ear? Colifloor.

Remember the categories? Okay, yes. Food. This is great. In Spanish, it means chili with meat. Dana. What is chili corn carnage? Chilicarnet.

Slightly more esoteric knowledge in this. Gummy green vegetable used to make gumbo. Karen. What is okra? What is okra? Yes. There may have been Dana who buzzed day. Karen waved her buzzer.

Dramatically. It really got my attention. I'm easily distracting. Finally, TV cook, excuse me, for $1,000. TV cook who wrote The Art of French Cooking. Who is Julia Child? It is Julia Child, yes. That's the last.

I know, that was the hardest question. I don't know. Maybe she's still new? Maybe people didn't watch cooking shows as much back in the day. Well, that's your 60s Jeopardy for this. week. It proved to be a popular segment. We'll bring it back. Not bad. I greatly enjoyed that, yeah. I thought it was going to be like, name the president who you're like, wait a minute. I picked some categories that actually had questions that we could answer. Like some of these

are not, some of the entire categories we would be just completely stuck down. Like what? Like the British Empire, if we were really good. Some of the, some of the answers is like, who is is Gypsy Rose Lee? I don't know. Oh, the stripper. Oh, okay. Well, I mean, depending on, would you be able to get the answer base. Sorry. And then there's one called Cowboys and Indians that is offensive. I was wondering. It's just downright, offensive.

All right. All right. Good job, Brains. Thank you, Chris, and old-timey Jeopardy. So this episode is 77, episode 77. Do you guys know, 77 is the smallest positive integer requiring five syllables? Oh. 77.

That's a good one. Yeah. And then another cool fact about the number 77 is that during World War II in Sweden at the border with Norway, 77, though, the word, was used as a password because it's one of the trickiest things to pronounce in Swedish. So they can then easily identify people whether or not their native Swedish or Norwich or Norwich or Norwich. or Norwegian or German based on how they say 77. Oh, I love that. I love stuff like that. I don't know what it is in Swedish,

and I probably would garble it up, but there you go. And so this week, I don't think this will surprise anybody that I'm a big math nerd since I was a kid. I like numbers and I like math, and I think it's really cool. None of us are surprised. We knew. Not surprised. Nope, not surprised.

So we thought this week would be a good episode on Numbers I used to watch Keep it going It won't stop What you doing man I'm coming for that number one spark Yes indeed

Ludacris I'm hotter than Nevada I used to watch Square One TV Like I know You might be thinking Can you make a show About numbers interesting Maybe we can

Maybe we can't But I used to watch I can't work from school And that was great It sounds great show of numbers I did not like math As a kid But I liked English

But, like, I love Square One TV. Square One's entertaining. It was a treat at school when the teacher wanted to give us a treat or they didn't prepare a lesson for the day. That's right. We would watch Square One. Or if the teacher just wanted to put their head down on their desk for it. But either way.

As an adult now, I'm like, I could see that. Basically, it was a variety slash comedy skit show with lots and lots of music that was all about just, like, teaching basic mathematical concepts. And I mean just especially the really memorable thing I mean there were a lot of like cool segments But the songs that they did were fantastic And they really stuck in your head There was a there's a song called 8% of my love

That teaches percentages But it is a meatloaf parody It is a parody of like Paradise by the Dashboard Light And other meatloaf songs with the piano and everything It's brilliant One of the great songs Dana actually brought up Totally Unprovoked was a great song called 9-99

when they sing about the fantastic number 9. Times any number you can find, it all comes back to 9. And it is talking about the That was their best song. The magical seeming property of the number 9 is that if you multiply 9 by times any number, any number at all, and then take your answer and add up the digits.

And then if you get a two-digit or three-digit, whatever, whatever, however many digit dancers, just keep adding them and adding them and adding them until you get to a single digit. It will always add up to nine. Oh, any multiple of nine. They didn't really explain it when, you know, in Square One TV, they just talk about how awesome it was. And it is awesome.

It is. Because, you know, when you're a kid and you're in math class, you're asked a lot to, like, what are the factors of this number? Like, is this number a multiple of this? Is it a multiple of that? And so a really good way of figuring out if the number was a multiple of nine is that, you know, if you calculated, if you added up all the digits, it would have to get to nine.

That one did seem magical to me as, I mean, even when I only could multiply, you know, up to two digits, it still seemed to imagine. I'm like, 18, eight plus one is nine. It's incredible. Yeah, it's amazing. And it's like, you know, you try to trick it, you know, write down like a 25 digit random number.

It's like, well, surely this will ruin all and spend an hour like adding and adding and adding and adding and adding. And then it's nine again. Yeah, yeah. So when you're doing this, what you are doing it, It is called you are taking the digital root of the number. That process of iterative summing until you get down to a single digit by adding, then adding again, is called taking the digital route.

Okay. And these are actually pretty useful. Like, they contain information. The digital, knowing the digital route of a number tells you something. So, for example, another trick we might have learned in school is that the digital root of any multiple of three will be, you know, either three, six, or nine. And that's how you know if a large number is divisible by three. Yep, yep.

The digital roots of successive multiples of eight, so the digital root of eight is eight, right? Eight times two is 16. The digital root of that is seven. Eight times three is 24. Digital root of that is six. The digital roots of eight are eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one, nine, eight, seven, six. on into infinity. If you take a random huge sum, so let's say 465,135 plus 321,657 equals, because I did this in a calculator, 786,792. Take my word for it. The digital root of the first number is six. The digital root of the second number is six. And the digital root of 786, 7992, if you get it down to two digits, it's 12.

If you start digital-rooting anything in, like, a sum of numbers, the digital root equation that you get down to, you will get to something that is true. Whoa. Yep. This is used. This can be used as, like, a sanity check. If you're adding up, like, a whole bunch of different numbers, you can digital-root them all and then add it up. And if it's not, if it's true, it's a good indication that you did it right. And if it's not true, you have some issue with your math.

That's a lot of trick-up. Yeah. It's an error-checking. Yeah. It's not 100% accurate, apparently, but it's good enough that, like, it's a good thing to do. So, what is it about 9? Why is the digital root of any multiple of 9? I'm wrapped here.

Okay, here we go. There's actually nothing special about 9. What is special about it is that we work in base 10. 9 is one less than the base that we work in, right? Because we work with the 1's column, 10s, column, 100s column, computer counts in base 2, uses binary, right? What do we say to school kids? to make it easier on them if I want to add nine to a number. Add 10 and subtract one.

Yeah. We tell them, we tell them add one to the tens column and then subtract one from the ones column. So if you have like 18 and you want to add nine to it, you subtract one from the ones column, seven, and then add one to the 10 to 18 plus nine is 27. That's an easy way to add nine. I still do this, by the way. Sure. Oh, yeah, absolutely. When you add nine to something, you never change the same.

sum of the digits. The digits in that within that number are always going to be the same sum, because you're just deleting one from one column. Because remember, when you're adding up the digits, it doesn't matter if it's tens or hundreds or thousands or anything. And adding one.

Yeah. Yeah. So it's going to it's always, you're never changing the sum. So if you start with nine, what is multiplication? It's just adding nine over and over and over again. So if you start with nine and you keep taking away one and adding one, it's always going to add up to to nine, always.

So if you're working in hexadecimal, base 16, 15 is the magic number. Oh. So every multiple of 15 in base 16 will always add back up to 15. That makes so much sense. Okay, now this should explain eight, because when you add eight to something, you take two away from the one's column and add only one more. Hence, the digital route goes down, down, down, down. The digital root of any positive integer shows you where that number is,

on the number line in relative position to the last multiple of nine. So an example, 11, the digital root of 11 is two. Two. It is two places after the last, after nine. Oh. The digital root of 21 is three. Three. It is three numbers after 18, the last multiple of nine.

That will always be a case. So we all know our multiplication tables, right? We're in grammar school, and they show. us this big square, the checkerboard pattern, and the numbers one through nine go down the side, the numbers one through nine go across the top, and then within the checkerboard, they show you what those numbers multiply out to. If you were to make a multiplication table, but instead of putting the products of the multiplication, but instead put in the digital roots of those products, you get what is known as a Vedic square, V-E-D-I-C, old mathematical square. As you

examine the Vedic square, you will find that if you look at each individual number and where it appears in the square and you actually like play connect the dots with them, they all connect up to symmetrical geometric patterns. So like the sixes in the Vedic square, there's a cluster of them, then there's another symmetrical cluster of them, and you can join it up to create like a star type pattern within the square. A lot of Islamic art uses these patterns, the old, old, old Islamic art because representational art like you can't draw people you know according to some interpretations of the religion you can't like draw people or animals or whatever like they do art that is that is abstract but it is founded in mathematical formulas and a lot of the patterns

are gotten from taking this Vedic square of digital roots and just joining up where the numbers meet whoa pulling up the images this is insane oh it's oh wow image there shows you like the locations of the numbers within the square. It's like Starburst. Oh, it's beautiful. And the thing is you can take it. It's beautiful. And you can like join it up. It's like, oh, well, I'll take the pattern that emerges for six and the pattern that emerges for three. And then I'll just draw that as one geometric shape. That will be a symmetrical shape. And then you can lay that on top of

something else and use different colors. Yeah. You can see why the early mathematicians like were just like this almost magical power that the numbers had, these like hidden patterns that you see. That is really cool. All right, you math nerds. Oh, that's me. All right, you normal nerds. Stop projecting. I got a math quiz, and I, you know, I think one of the reasons why I was so drawn to math as a kid is I'm a visual thinker, and I can visualize a lot of the things that math

describes, like, you know, dots on a graph or the shape when you rotate along this axis. Like, I can really picture it in sort of the volume and shapes and stuff. I have a cool mathematical shape quiz, and it really is cool. I'm not just saying that. And they're weird technical shape names, but they're shapes that you probably see every day. Oh, okay, okay. I didn't know the name. Okay.

For example, and we've had this, like, I think twice on the show, the shape of a donut. A torus? Yes, is a torus. I think of it as a bagel, but, you know, potato potato. All right. Brings back some memories. All right. The Serpinski.

triangle is one of my favorite shapes. I remember actually I wrote a paper about it in 10th grade. It's a fractal, so parts of it can be repeated within itself. I might know it as a Serpinski's triangle, but gamers might have seen a similar shape from a very famous video game franchise. What shape and video game am I talking about? Chris. I think you're talking about the Triforce.

Yes. Okay. The Trivon. It is. Yeah, you can repeat that design inside itself. Forever. If you guys know Legend Zelda, the Triforce, which is three triangles, one triangle on top and two triangles of bottom, and it looks like a big triangle together. If you keep repeating that in every single triangle, you get what is called a Serpinski's triangle. Oh, okay. It's really four triangles. Well, one's in the negative space. Yeah, three in the positive space.

Well, five because then we have a big triangle. But really infinite triangles. All right. What is a radix? It's also called a radical. symbol. Oh. Right. I was like, oh, that sounds familiar. What is it from? Is it?

It is the name of that weird checkmark symbol when you write a root. Oh. It's like a little V with the extended tail. Yeah. It's kind of like a check mark. The radical of a number. There you go. Okay.

Hyperbolic paraboloid. Might sound super technical or like a medical disease. But thanks to this shape that this particular snack is able to snack on top of themselves very neatly. Oh, oh. Would that be Pringles? Yes. Pringles. Yes.

I need to know the mathematical name for when you have the inverted prinkles and make duck lips. We've also done that. There should be a name. Hyperbolic paraboloids. Right, truncated hyperbolic paraboloid lips. All right. Which game table in a casino can you see people tossing two regular hexahedrons, Colin? That would be at the craps table. That craps table. Oh, come on, guys. This is a clean show.

A hexahedron is a 3D shape that has six sides, and a regular hexahedron is a cube, basically. Cube has six faces. This is my last challenge. So a three-sided shape is called a triangle. We're all looking at quick questions. Four-sided is called. Quadrilateral. Quadrilateral. Quadrilateral.

The quadrilateral. Five-sided? Pentagon. We're all waiting for the one where you're going to trick at it. Pentagon. Also, authoritatively. Five-sided figure is a Pentagon. Six is a hexagon.

Eight is a octagon. Octagon. What is a seven-sided shape called? Yeah, septagon. Incorrect. No. Is it a heptagon? Yeah.

Oh, a heptagon. Heptagon. Not a septicon. I didn't, oh. It sounded like a transformer. I knew there was a thing called a heptagon, but I thought that maybe that was only in the 60s. So I have a very bad mnemonic to remember this. Go on.

Hepcats. Yes. You know, like, you're a cool hepcat. Hepcats has seven letters, so it's a seven-seven. Oh, okay. Okay, okay. But it's cool. Hepcats.

Hepcats. Not a hap cat. You're like hepcat, that's six letter, six size. That's a hexagon. It presumes that you know hexagon and octagon. Yeah. All right. What about a nine-sided shape?

This I definitely am not going to get wrong. It's a nonagon. Yes, it is. Nonagon. It's fun to say. Good job, you guys. That was my quick math shape quiz. That was good.

It was pretty cool. That was good. Okay, I'm going to talk about numbers you see all the time. If you don't interact with necessarily all the time. time, but you definitely see them all the time. Phone numbers. I haven't memorized any phone numbers until a lot. Yeah.

I mean, in the days since, yeah, since you just entered in your phone memory. I feel, I'm nervous. I think about memorizing something all the time. I should. Like, I know my phone number. I think that's it. I know my phone number and the phone number of the house where I grew up. I know.

And not many more past that. I know my best friend in high school is parents' phone number. Like, I was like I could just call them, I guess, if something happens. I know the old. customer service number for Nintendo. Neither here or there. They'll still help you. I know 510, 841 West, which is the pizza place that we used to order pizza.

So something happens to your phone. You can still get pizza. So the format of the 10 digit phone number in America is three numbers, then three numbers, and then four numbers. The first three numbers are the area code. And the second three numbers are the exchange. Yes. Oh, okay, yeah. And the last four are just the number.

Area codes were established in 1951. They were originally called North American Numbering Plan. There were under 90 codes when they first did it. And they dished it out by population density. So if you were in a really densely populated place, you had a number like a one or a two. And that was because we used to actually have to dial a phone. Like there was a little rotary dial on it. You put your finger at it and you drag it all the way around.

So it's the fastest dial. Oh, okay. So if you were in a big place, you had the best numbers. You know, the fastest. New York City was 212, right? Yeah. L.A. was 213. Chicago was 312 because of convenience.

So you don't have to pull your finger too far around to call the most popular numbers. What's the exchange? Okay, so the exchange consists of two letters that correspond to where you reside, your town code or your location code. No way. I Love Lucy or old TV shows, they would be like Clondike 549 or K.I. or KL. So it's KL are the letters. I'm in Klondike, but I'm in District 4, so it's KL4, and then the last four are your actual phone number or the number that you get. And that's

why they're letters on the phone number is because they correspond to your exchange. So now people use them to spell out words or whatever. I'm guessing it was easier to remember, to just remember the name of the exchange and then five numbers instead of just having to remember seven numbers. That's why they did it that way. They were using the names because I thought people wouldn't be able to remember seven digits, like it helped make it easier to remember how to connect with people. But they moved away from it. It was a pain to do. So they just moved to translating all those names into the numbers that they corresponded to on the phone thing. Okay. It wasn't until 1991 that the exchange part of phone numbers would have a zero or a one

in the middle. And that had to do with the letters because there's no letters on the zero or one. And those corresponded to your neighborhood. So there were no neighborhoods that had just my letters. Right, I never even thought about that. Can you guess what the most expensive phone number is? Somebody sold for $2.7 million. Whoa. Okay, okay. The most expensive phone number ever sold.

Yeah. My first thought was it was like 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, but that couldn't be because they didn't have a 1. It's got to be 1,800 sex talk or something like that. I was going to guess all 8. Oh, that's a good guess. All 8s. But in the Chinese culture, eight means to get rich or to get wealthy. So a lot of numbers are lucky if it's all eight.

It could be all sevens too. You guys are totally on the right track. It's all sixes. It was sold in Qatar. It's funny you say eight because legend has it that Steve Wozniak had the phone number that was all eight. He likes all the, he likes repeating numbers. So this is part of the legend. And he decided not to have that phone number anymore because he'd get prank calls,

like a hundred prank calls a day. Just somebody pushing eight a bunch of times and calling. calling him. Yep. Steve, you're refrigerating. The prank within a prank. All right, we're going to take a quick break. A word from our sponsor.

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of today to help you perhaps understand them better. We are also part of Airwave Media Network. I've been doing the program since 2006. That's a long time, and the show has a long name. My history can beat up your politics. Find me wherever you get podcasts. Welcome back. You're listening to Good Job Brain. This week, we're talking about numbers. So let me ask you guys a question about Roman numerals. All right. Yeah. This is not going to be our super tricky one. I mean, we do get these, though, at pub quizzes. This is like a crossword staple. Express, yeah, the year 2013 in Roman numerals. You know, we It's always in the bottom corner of the crossword puzzle

where they didn't run out of words and it's just like Roman numeral meaning 58. You know, these days, yeah, Roman numerals it's pretty much in movie credits or when they're filling up space in the crossword. Yep. So just very quickly, you do a quick quiz here. There's nothing difficult.

I mean, you guys know what the Roman numeral for four is. Sure. I. Sure. And you know what the Roman numeral for 10 is. Yes. Right. Okay, you get it.

And then, you know, there's M and L and C and D. We go on. All this. Do you guys know what the Roman numeral is for zero? There is none because there was no zero. That's right. This was a Chris Kohler trick question. The Romans did not have a numeral that indicated zero.

And it's not as unusual a phenomenon as you might have once thought. A lot of the ancient numbering systems didn't consider zero a number. And it sounds really hard to get to kind of wrap your mind around the idea. It's like a philosophical kind of arguments. Well, there's nothing to count. Well, it's not philosophical. It's really grounded in reality. Like, what are you using numbers for?

Using numbers to carve on a stone tablet, how many sheep you sold the farmer next door? Well, you can't sell them no sheep. So why are you even right? You're not going to write in a, yeah, you're not going to give them a blank tablet either. That's totally right. And, you know, the numbers and numerals were things for tallying and commerce and keeping track of sheep. And, you know, maybe how many taxes you owed and things like that. But if you're just doing really, really simple, not even math, but just simple basic recordings of numbers,

the idea of a nothing or a void, it didn't rise to the level of having a symbol, a consistent symbol, let's say, to represent that because you weren't using numerals to do advanced math. That makes sense. You know, there are a lot of cultures, the ancient cultures, where they would have symbols that were, they were just sort of placeholders, you know,

and you wouldn't say that it came before one. It's just, oh, I'll just make a mark here to indicate nothing here. As you say, Karen, it really was philosophical. And like the Greeks, the ancient Greeks would have, this was an intense issue for them is well is zero a thing you know numbers number our numerals name things out in the universe but how can how can a something be a nothing and it was it was beyond just a matter of recording digits down and they didn't have it the Greeks did not have a zero in the sense that we talk about a zero Romans didn't have it you know part of it was because

they didn't have you know positional uh numbering system so like you know how we've got like our 10s column our ones column right right and that was part of it but there were even cultures like the Babylonians that had positional numeral systems, and they didn't necessarily consider a number as a zero. They would have placeholders or just a little mark to indicate nothing here. And just as an, um, actually, uh, prevention here. The Romans, they did have notation for it. They, they, they would write nulla, the word nulla, you know, meaning like nullify. Same rule. But it wasn't a symbol. It wasn't a mark. Right. It was more just, hey, I know there's nothing here. It would be totally awesome if they use like they drew little catheads.

Oh, I guess then that might mean a tally for a cat. This has been a word from your um-actually prevention squad. It was the early Indian mathematicians that it seems like were the first ones that came up with this is a number. It's not just a quantity or an abstract placeholder will come up with a specific, consistent number. Right, that is a digit, that's right. And they were. It looks like we traced back to about the ninth century.

They have inscriptions of small circles. in Indian mathematics that became zero. It seems so simple, and yet it's so complicated in another way that once you allow yourself to think of zero as a number, you can open up to a lot more complicated types of mathematics. For example, try multiplying LXVI by VI, you know? I mean, we laugh about it, but this was exposed to a problem. So you need a positional system,

and you need something to hold the place for zero that can be treated like a number. So, you know, as we briefly touched on earlier in the show, you know, a lot of early Islamic mathematicians made crazy strides in terms of advanced math, and they in turn were inspired by a lot of Indian and Hindu mathematicians. And so that tradition, we think, came from the early Indian mathematicians through the Islamic world and from then on into the European world. It wasn't until the 12th century in Europe that the use of a consistent single mark meaning zero as a number, became widespread. What did they use? They would leave nothing. It would be an open column to indicate an empty quantity. There wasn't anything that they could manipulate as a number like a four or a seven to do complex things like algebra, you know, which incidentally is an Arabic word algebra. So along with a lot of other concepts, we got that through that tradition. So it is, it's just one of those things, again, we talk about things you take for granted. And when I first

read this, it kind of blew my mind of, all right, zero is a quantity, but not a number, that this was a big issue once upon a time. Don't they talk about the Maya's invented zero or something, the Mayan calendar? The Mayan calendar would have, and there were other cultures that would have consistent marks for it to say, you know, this is a placeholder for the quantity, but they wouldn't do the kind of interactive mathematics using it as a digit that we were talking about. Okay. I always thought algebra growing up, I thought it was like a bra made out of algae. Like a mermaid top. Mermaid underwear. What do you call them?

That's, okay. Algebra, Algae bra. That is. What does a nerdy mermaid wear under? Underdural. Wow. Dear Lappy Tapie. Karen, age 31.

I know. It's not from children. Okay. Here is a quiz. I've always wanted to do this quiz. And this gives me a good opportunity to actually do it. We could spin this out into a series if it should it prove popular. Wow.

So tell us, listener. Yes. I'm calling this quiz. I forgot what I was supposed to remember, which is I'm going to give, there's a lot of mnemonics in the math world to remember certain math things, taking a very abstract series of numbers and turning into a memorable sentence or something along those lines. So I'm going to give you the mnemonic, and you tell me what this math mnemonic is supposed to help you remember. Oh, okay.

Okay. Okay, oh, all right. Sometimes it's easier to remember the mnemonic than the thing that you're supposed to remember, yes. Okay. So we'll start with one that you might remember from grammar school. Please excuse my dear Aunt Sally. Oh. Colin, maybe, well, I don't know, you both both both at the same time, and you both look the same amount of not sure. Oh, no, I'm sure.

Oh, really? Oh, okay, well, Karen. Pemdos. Pemdos. It's the order of operation. It is, yes. parentheses like exponents

I couldn't remember what the E was that's why I Yes okay To tell you when you have a Division addition subtraction To tell you that when you have a lengthy series of mathematical equations

Or a big mathematical equation How do you handle it What you should work first? Well what order you have to work it in first To get to the correct answer Yes please excuse my dear aunt Sally Okay King Henry died by drinking

Chocolate Milk Karen. Oh, no, I'm thinking about, I thought it was Animal Kingdom. Yeah, yeah, Kingdom. Oh, Kingdom Filet. No, King Henry died by drinking chocolate milk. Oh. That's the multiples of tens in the prefix like kilo.

Yeah. Kelo, hector, deca, base, decency, milly. Oh, okay. Yes. King Henry died by drinking chocolate milk. Kilo, hector, base. Now, some mnemonics use units or, you because there is no word for it. So B, it's just

by itself. Yeah, by. Desi, scinty, milly. Okay. Here's a really short one. Some kids have trouble with this and they need a mnemonic for it. Nice doggy. Nice doggy. Dana. Numerator denominator. Which one is on top, which one is on the bottom.

NB. Nice doggy. Numerator denominator. That is helpful. Yeah. I wish Young Collin do that one. I value xylophones like cows dig milk Said by a real lover of xylophones Karen This is Roman numerals This is Roman numerals

IVX LCDM 1550 100 500 A thousand I value xylophones like cows dig milk This is a good twist on mnemonics We're just kind of backwards figuring it out That's right yeah Here's this is a mnemonic

This might be tough, but maybe you've heard this one before. So the mnemonic is five tomatoes. Five tomatoes. Five tomatoes. It's a unit conversion. It's a certain unit conversion. Dana. Is it 5,000?

No. It's a certain unit conversion, and it tells you, like, when you're converting this unit of measurement to another unit of measurement, a helpful way of remembering it would be five tomatoes. FFT feet. Oh, to meters? No, it's not a meter. It's not. So, do you know how many feet there are in a mile off top of your head?

5,280? Yes. So if you remember 5-2-8-0. Oh, 5-2. So when you're thinking of feet in a mile, just think about five tomatoes. Oh. 5-2-8-0. 5-2-8-0.

52-80 feet in a mile. That is good, right? That is good. I've just been memorizing like a sucker. Some old hippie caught another hippie tripping on acid. A more common one is Sokatoa, which is it's sine, cosine, and tangent. Yes, finding the sine cosine and tangent based on angles in a right triangle. You can remember Sokatoa, S-O-H-C-H-T-O-A.

But if that's tough, you can just remember, some old hippie caught another hippie tripping on acid. That's pretty bad, right? Okay, here is a mnemonic. The mnemonic is, a rat in the house may eat the ice cream. This is to help you remember something mathematical related that a lot of kids typically have trouble with. Just remember, a rat in the house may eat the ice cream. Mmm. Karen.

How to spell arithmetic? That is correct. John the other than the newspaper, yes. A rat in the house may eat the ice cream. The first letters of the word spell arithmetic properly. Weird thing to need to remember. Well, I mean, if you think about it, it comes up a lot on spelling tests, and you could, you might get it wrong as saying, like, arithmetic.

Right, right. Arithmetic. May I have a large container of coffee? Colin. That is a mnemonic for digits of pie. It certainly is, yes. That gets you pie to seven digits by counting the number of letters in each word. Yes.

May I have a large. container of coffee that is 3-1-4-1 etc and those are your mnemonics wow thank you for helping me to remember what i had to remember book club on monday gym on Tuesday date night on Wednesday out on the town on Thursday quiet night in on Friday it's good to have a routine and it's good for your because with regular comprehensive eye exams at Specsavers, you'll know just how healthy they are. Visit Spexavers.caver's.cai to book your next eye exam. Eye exams provided by independent optometrists. All right, we're counting down to the end of the show, and we got one last quiz segment from college.

Yes, we do. You guys know who really loves numbers. Who? Robots. Yes. Yes. Yes. So it is time once again for Elvis, the electronic lyrical.

Vocal... Interpolation... Interpretation... I mean, I think we get sloppier each time. I think that we would actually get tighter. We should respect Elvis. I'm sorry, Elvis. Elvis, of course, is our computerized... If this is like an all-binary round...

I've converted every song to binary. It's going to be like two hours long. Zero-one, zero-one, zero-one, zero. Get at your pens. I don't know, Tom. I give up. of course will be computerized, synthesized voice speaking opening lines of hit songs, famous songs in his inimitable way.

So today, in the spirit of numbers, all of the songs have numbers in the title. So there's a theme. Yes. So just remember that. And what I'm looking for is the name of the song and also who performed the song. It would be a very annoying thing for us to do is to just predict what all the songs are going to be. That's what I was thinking. I was thinking 99.

No, that would be a very. know anything to do, yes. You're right. I got told you. You are correct. But everybody's thinking about it now. They're getting ready. Okay, here we go. Jenny, Jenny, who can I turn to?

You give me something I can hold on to. I know you think I'm like the other before, who saw your name and number on the wall. It's a weird coming from a robot place. Chris. I believe the song title is, Jenny and then in parentheses 8675309

Close enough It's actually inverted, yes It's 675309 Slash Jenny And that is by Jake Giles band No No

Dana Tommy Tuto Tommy Tuto T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T O N N N Here we go. Next one. Is it getting better? Or do you feel the same? Will it make it easier on you now?

You got someone to blame. Karen. One by you two. Correct. Which also has two. It does. It does. It does.

Good job. Moving right along. Tumble out of bed and I stumbled to the kitchen. Pour myself a cup of ambition. Yon and stretch and try to come alive. I think that was Dana. Nine to five.

It is nine to five. Dolly Parton. By Dolly Parton. I jogged to that song before work. From the movie of the same name, of course. A little bit of a more up-tempo hit. It feels like a perfect night to dress up like hipsters and make fun of our exes. Uh-uh.

It feels like a perfect night for breakfast at midnight to fall in love with strangers. Uh-huh. This song is so familiar. This is a very recent hit by a very young female singer. Dana. It's Taylor Swift. Is it 22? Yeah.

Taylor Swift. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Here's a big hit from the 1980s. You and I in a little toy shop. Buy a pack of balloons with the money we've got. set them free at the break of dawn till one by one they were gone

Dana again 99 red left balloons I like the mashup yeah yeah that was the English version so 99 red balloons or 99 left balloon right that was the that was the original version by Nina

Nina correct I thought you were gonna I thought Elvis was gonna sing in German I'd be like oh I know what it is he's not that smart yeah He doesn't have that module. All right. This is a little tricky here, but I think you guys have enough information. This is a number one hit from 1955.

Some people say a man is made out a mud. A poor man's made out a muscle and blood. Muscle and blood and skin and bones. A mind that's weak and a back that's strong. Oh my God. First of all, that was really good rhythmic talking on Elvis's part for that one. The song is 16 tons. Correct.

I do not know. Yeah, made famous by Tennessee Ernie Ford. Yes. Oh, okay. It's such a good, good, just solid song. Man. All right, last one here, guys. We'll close this out.

You guys ready for some slow jams? Here's a slow jam. Candlelight and soul forever. A dream of you and me together. Say you believe it. Say you believe it. That was a hit from the 1990s. Oh, my God.

God. Karen. Oh, my God. To become one, spice girls. That is, to become one by the spice girls. Yeah. Nice. Yeah.

I'm kidding myself. It just sucks all the soul right out of the song. When to be called. That's a good song. Well done, team. Well done. Thanks, Elvis. Thanks, Elvis.

All right. And that's our number show. Thank you guys for joining me. And thank you guys listeners for listening in hope you learn a lot about nothing in the form of zero phone numbers and mnemonics and

a bunch of cool stuff about math you can find us on iTunes on Stitcher on SoundCloud and also on our website goodjobbrain.com and check out our sponsor at Squarespace.com slash good job brain and thank you and we'll see you and we'll see you guys next week.

Bye. Bye. If you like this podcast, can we recommend another one? It's called Big Picture Science. You can hear it wherever you get your podcast, and its name tells part of the story. The big picture questions and the most interesting research in science. Seth and I are the host. Seth is a scientist.

I am Molly, and I'm a science journalist. and we talk to people smarter than us and we have fun along the way. The show is called Big Picture Science and as Seth said, you can hear it wherever you get your podcast.