In Search of Woodall Primes
More or Less: Behind the Stats
BBC
4.6 • 3.5K Ratings
🗓️ 30 June 2017
⏱️ 21 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
It’s the 100 year centenary of an obscure type of prime number – the Woodall Primes. To celebrate, stand-up mathematician Matt Parker is calling on listeners to search for a new one. Ordinary citizens can already help search for Mersenne Prime numbers by lending computer processing power to GIMPS – the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search. Matt explains to Tim Harford what a Woodall Prime is, and why it deserves more attention.
Also - Making penalty shoot-outs fairer - 60% of penalty shoot-outs are won by the team going first, can this unfairness be overcome?
(image Matt Parker / photographer: Steve Ullathorne)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know. |
| 0:04.6 | My name's Linda Davies and I Commission Podcasts for BBC Sounds. |
| 0:08.4 | As you'd expect, at the BBC we make podcasts of the very highest quality featuring the most knowledgeable |
| 0:14.3 | experts and genuinely engaging voices. What you may not know is that the BBC |
| 0:20.4 | makes podcasts about all kinds of things like pop stars, |
| 0:24.6 | poltergeist, cricket, and conspiracy theories and that's just a few examples. |
| 0:29.7 | If you'd like to discover something a little bit unexpected, find your next podcast over at BBC Sounds. |
| 0:36.0 | Hello, this week on the podcast we have two things for you. |
| 0:40.0 | First, some brand new material. |
| 0:42.0 | Tim Harford talks to the stand-up mathematician Matt Parker. |
| 0:45.2 | He's got a particular obsession with prime numbers, something that certainly comes through in this interview. |
| 0:50.6 | And we've also got this week's BBC World Service program about penalty shootouts. |
| 0:56.0 | However, that's been in the podcast before, so regular listeners may have already heard it. |
| 1:01.0 | If you miss it though, don't worry, it's at the end of this |
| 1:04.2 | podcast. But first, our Primer on Primes. |
| 1:09.1 | Matt, can I just get a bit of level? |
| 1:10.3 | Sure, so this is me talking to the microphone for level purposes and I can very briefly discuss my breakfast from this morning if you wish to have that's all good. |
| 1:18.0 | Excellent. It wasn't a great breakfast. Excellent. Well I'm joined by Matt Parker, the stand-up mathematician, author of things to make and do in |
| 1:25.8 | the fourth dimension. |
| 1:26.8 | Matt, could you maybe introduce yourself? |
| 1:28.6 | Yes, so I work as a mass communicator. |
| 1:32.2 | I am the public engagement in math fellow at Queen Mary, University |
... |
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