podcasts/wbu11.mp3

The first non-trivial palindromic episode of Wrong, But Useful, in which Colin gets a touch of the Samuel Hansens and starts picking fights, and Dave does his best to calm things down.

Fight #1, with loyal listener @srcav about which form of a straight line is better.

The opposite of fighting is clearly unboxing: @standupmaths (Matt Parker in real life) does exactly that to some calculators. He also apologises to the imperial system and is on tour with the Festival of the Spoken Nerd. (Sadly, the February 16th date in Bristol is sold out.)

Fight #2: @DrTonyPadilla (guess who he is in real life?) should come and have a go if he thinks he’s hard enough: his @numberphile video is here and it spilt Colin’s pint of lemonade. (The Aperiodical has a good roundup of criticism and explanation here.)

“Let him go, he’s not WURF it!” screams Dave, and tries to distract Colin with Kaprekar’s constant, which leads to the most riveting piece of radio ever recorded, as it involves Colin being repeatedly wrong - for the only time in history.

Thanks to @srcav and @notonlyahatrack for their solutions to the question in Episode 10 (spoiler: the ratio of the areas was 2:5).

Fight #3: Pythagoras is part of trigonometry. Lemme attim! Lemme attim!

This month’s puzzle: Solve: $\sqrt{ x + \sqrt{ x + \sqrt{x + \sqrt{x + …}}}}=4$

Dave doesn’t get: why is GCSE maths important? Colin: “You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry!”