# You're reading: Posts Tagged: Matt Parker

### An incorrect model of the lottery, and when it doesn’t matter

Recently I came across an interesting idea about little mistakes in counting problems that actually don’t amount to much. In A Problem Squared 030, Matt Parker was investigating the question “What are the odds of having the same child twice?” and made some simplifying assumptions when thinking about DNA combinatorics. He justified leaving out a small number of things when counting an astronomical number of things by going through an example from the lottery.

The current UK lottery uses 59 balls and draws 6 of these, so the one in 45 million figure arises from $$\binom{59}{6}=45,\!057,\!474$$, and the probability of winning is a tiny

$\frac{1}{45057474} = 0.00000002219387620 \text{.}$

Matt posits the idea that somewhere along the way we forget to include some tickets.

But let’s say along the way while I’m working it out, for strange reasons I go ‘oh you know what, I’m going to ignore all the options which are all square numbers. You know, I just can’t be bothered including them. Yeah, they’re legitimate lottery tickets, but just to make the maths easier I’m going to ignore them’. And people are getting up in arms, and they’re like ‘you can’t ignore them, they’re real options’.

Between the three Aperiodical editors (myself, Christian Lawson-Perfect and Peter Rowlett), there’s a developing tradition of excellent mathematical gift-giving. This year, Christian has excelled himself by designing and creating a brilliant mathematical hoodie, which features a meme about an in-joke (and who can resist either a meme or an in-joke?)

### Podcasting About: A Podcast of Unnecessary Detail

In this series of posts, we’ll be featuring mathematical podcasts from all over the internet, by speaking to the creators of the podcast and asking them about what they do.

We spoke to Helen Arney, Steve Mould and Matt Parker, the three members of science comedy trio Festival of the Spoken Nerd, about their new podcast, A Podcast of Unnecessary Detail.

### Podcasting about: A Problem Squared

In this series of posts, we’ll be featuring mathematical podcasts from all over the internet, by speaking to the creators of the podcast and asking them about what they do.

We spoke to comedian and presenter Bec Hill about the podcast she co-hosts with stand-up mathematician Matt Parker, in which they solve problems.

### Maths at the Edinburgh Fringe, 2019

As the hordes descend upon the city of Edinburgh for another August-ful of comedy, theatre, arts and culture, the question I’m sure you’re asking yourself is, ‘what about the maths?’ Zero problem: we’re here with a quick guide to some of the big pluses you’ll find in the Fringe Guide.