Wrong, But Useful: Episode 71

/podcasts/wbu71.mp3

In the 71st episode of Wrong, But Useful, we’re joined by @nookiedv, who is Anouk de Vos in real life. We discuss:

• Number of the podcast: 1729, a fairly uninteresting number.
• Sums of cubes updates:
  • [33](https://www.bbvaopenmind.com/en/science/mathematics/the-mystery-of-number-33-and-the-diophantine-equations?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=rrssopenmind&psm=psm::fb:—

-:rrssopenmind:::::20190813::sitlnk::&sfns=mo) - 42 - 3 is also interesting as there are two solutions but it’s unknown if there are more (posed in 1953) - since recording, 3 has been found again!

• The Collatz conjecture:
  • maybe it isn’t true?
  • Process approaches 1 for nearly all starting points (Terry Tao)
• Numberblocks, Sumaze primary, and DragonBox
• GeoGebra
• Number of Core Maths students increased last year
• Pitching core maths?
• Reuben’s homework - Round three dice
• Puzzle feedback: Gold star for Adam Atkinson who got 4/9 as P1’s win probability. I evaluated a double integral. Silver stars for our favourite listener in Carrom Downs, Australia, Sam Steele and @schwartzstack, who both gave the right answer for the wrong reasons (higher mean doesn’t mean more likely to win).
• New Puzzle: (via @david_cobac You have a 10 by 10 square grid. A number from 1 to 100 is selected and the corresponding square is coloured. This is repeated 100 times. On average, how many squares do you expect to be not coloured in?