"CHEERING AND APPLAUSE good evening and welcome to QI.  for our theme is geometry." " we have the shapely Johnny Vegas." " APPLAUSE" "The curvaceous Rob Brydon." " APPLAUSE" "The hyperbolic David Mitchell." " APPLAUSE" "Alan Davies." " APPLAUSE" "So let's hear your geometrical buzzers." " Rob goes..." "# Bermuda Triangle" "# It makes people disappear... #" "And Johnny goes..." "I don't care... #" "David goes... like a wheel within a wheel... #" "And Alan goes... all day long... # you're looking very svelte." " What's your secret?" " it's a tidy neck.  but not too much." " that's the secret... part hero." " Anyone have any thoughts as to why he might be looking or might not be looking svelte?" " Is it to do with the direction of his stripes?" " It is to do with the direction of his stripes." " look at the picture there." " It's accentuating my breasts." " that's Alexander Armstrong." " It does look a bit like him." " It does." " Extraordinary." " They make fat people wear stripes and you can tell how old they are." " It's like cutting a tree in half." " but they don't." " You're right." " That's the point." " Absolutely right." " People should wear the..." "the horizontal ones that Johnny is sporting." " It's very interesting because almost everybody thinks that vertical stripes make people look slimmer.  but research from a man called Dr Peter Thompson of York University has found that the large majority think the one in the vertical stripe is larger" "than the one in the horizontal stripe when they are the same size." " this shows that it makes no difference at all because we're determining whether wearing vertical or horizontal stripes makes you look thinner and you can't tell by looking." " The difference is so slight that you have to do research with hundreds and hundreds of people." " people look as fat or thin as they are." " You are..." "I beg to differ." " I have a friend who's quite short and he likes to wear vertical stripes because they make him look taller." " Only when he's not standing next to anyone." " It's not going to make him look taller than a taller man." "" There's a normal-sized man next to an enormous man!" " he's taken his striped shirt off." " It's a tiny man next to a normal man." " I have to say." " you think vertical stripes make people look thinner." " so she must be fatter than she looks." " horizontal stripes start making you look thin." " otherwise she'd never dare wear horizontal stripes." " she must be fat." " APPLAUSE" "So these are the things that go through your mind when you see someone wearing stripes?" "" She must be nine mile long"?" " horizontal stripes are more slimming than vertical ones." " you may know this cos you're bright." " Not that you others aren't." " I'll feel terrible if I don't!" " Why do columns around the Parthenon look straight?" " Because they are." " I don't think I know this and I think I'm going to say something embarrassing." " Go on." " so that it looks straight." " they made it wider." " This was the theory for a long time." " It's a thing called entasis." " from a distance it looks as if it bows inwards." " it looks straight." " But it turns out this isn't what they did after all." " It's Alan's first answer which is they look straight cos they are straight." " That's not a question!" " Why does this man look thin?" " Because he is!" " That..." "That has taken me on a whole circle!" "" The reason they look straight is because they are." " This is why I struggled at school!" " It's the Q of QI..." "If a train travels at 40mph how did it get there?" " Cos it did!" " LAUGHTER" "It's sort of that." " It's not sort of that." " It's very confusing!" " but with a twiddly bit at the end." " Why does that look straight?" " Because it's not." " That would have been a question." " Why does that look straight?" " Because it is!" " Sometimes..." "Because it is!" " Sometimes things look..." "It's straight!" " Johnny." " I'm not." " I'm just confused at the start!" " Let me un-confuse you because the same man who discovered..." "Johnny." " who discovered that hoops...?" " Peter Thompson." " He also discovered that the straight lines on the Parthenon..." "He's good with lines." ".. are straight because they're straight?" " He is here tonight in the studio." " Peter?" " He's wearing a straight moustache." " but what's your point?" " He's looking fantastically slim tonight because he's wearing horizontal stripes." " It is true..." "I'll still have a heart attack." " I'll be in denial." " DAVID:" "What do you have to wear to look not dead when you are?" " Why am I looking so good?" " You look good because you're wearing horizontal stripes." " They make you look taller." " certainly." " but someone has to do the science to show what is true." " it won't make a lot of difference because the effect's not that big." " LAUGHTER" "You may have aroused the beast within Johnny." " I give you my theory!" " everybody!" " APPLAUSE Excellent." " There you are." " that first saw some pillars that looked straight rather than that they're just straight?" " but not on the Parthenon.  they look straight." " that it helps them stand up more." " There you are." " The columns on the Parthenon look straight because they are straight." " right?" " one is the kiki and the other is the bouba." " clearly." " Would you agree with that?" " Kiki's the spiky one." " Would you agree?" " I would say kiki is the splodgy one and bouba is the spiky one." " The other way round?" " Johnny?" " I hate to think!" " I would say they should go back to their dating agency." " LAUGHTER" "And ask for a refund." " Shall we ask the audience what they think?" " put your hand up." " That's a huge majority." " Who thinks kiki may be the one on the right?" " There's a few of you going along with Rob." " Are you all Welsh?" " There is no right or wrong answer." " was a..." "A pirate!" " That's the word I was after(!" ")" " Arr-arr-arr-arr!" " APPLAUSE" "I was..." "I wanted to say "psychologist"." " I looked at you and all I could think of was "psychiatrist"." " blob" sounds blobby." " The point is it's true in all languages." " they would think that was the spiky one." " they would think of as blobby." " peer"." " whatever our cultures.  chunchuikit" would be a bird and "mauts" a fish." " there is a deep onomatopoeia within..." "And yet the Welsh word for "carrot" is "moron"." " LAUGHTER Is it?" " bucking the trend." " I'd say it would be for something more like a mousse or a pate." " A potato." " I would say a baked potato." " but... blunt-witted"." " hence oxymoron being a... carrot"... there's nothing "moronny"." " Unless you're being inappropriate with your carrot and going..." "What's odd about onion rings?" " rather than moron." " What rule do they come under?" " Onion rings?" " Let's not..." "It's not that every single word in every language is onomatopoeic." " yes." " Desk!" " Yeah..." "Desk!" " tin." " Boo-oo-oo-ook." " Pen!" " This is how you teach a chimp to speak." " pay attention." " Paper!" " APPLAUSE" "Very mean and most unjustified." " mother" is the "ma-ma" towards you and "father" is the "ba" and "da" away from you." " it's the baby doing that." " he's there." " But what if he's here?" " but mostly..." "Don't get cross with me!" " your northern charm!" " I give you one query and you look at me like I'm an arse!" " I can't answer..." "You've done this before on this show!" " Rob." " I'm very sorry." " Maybe I think you can take it more and that Johnny's a little more vulnerable." " you see?" " My eyes are soft!" " That's true." " yours are keen." " whereas I..." "I just..." "Johnny has the eyes of trust." " You have the eyes of prostitution." " LAUGHTER" "Whoa!" " I thought I was watching the Mr Men behind Alan's head!" " yes." " I like my eyes and the fact that you leave me alone when I go quiet." " tarts and chimpanzees and all." " perhaps we should get back to our books." " Can you tell me what the most successful textbook of all time is?" " Is it the one that teaches you what LOL means and LMAO?" " It probably is now." " Yeah." " what's our theme for the day?" " Geometry." " It's the..." "Logarithms." " not logarithms!" " LAUGHTER" "Oh!" " Do you want my eyes?" " He might listen to you." " is it logarithms?" " but it's a jolly good guess." " Some ancient geometrical textbook written probably by a Greek." " Kites For Beginners!" " David Mitchell." " Euclid's Elements." " The propositions of Euclid are all about planes and conical sections the physics that came afterwards." "" This is why all the buildings have been falling down." " Engineering obviously owed a huge amount to it." " Many mathematicians believe his book is perhaps the most beautiful of all the mathematical books." " We're looking at one of the earliest editions." " What does it say there?" "" The most" something "philosopher"." " it's written in English." " LAUGHTER" "APPLAUSE the names are written in Greek there." " and that's what threw me." " John Dee." " Have you heard of him?" " Hmm." " He was an extraordinary man who worked as a spy." " Can you tell me the cipher he used as a spy?" " Invisible ink?" " his call sign.  used it..." "Ian Fleming." " Yes.  007." " you will have seven points." " written backwards." " That's too much." " I'm not going to speak again!" " He was also one of the people responsible for bringing Euclid to the attention of the world." " We'll take a bird's-eye view now." " What's the best place to go to look into the future?" " A sci-fi convention." " A sci-fi convention?" " Yeah." " OK." " Maybe." " that's old light." " That's looking into the past." " Do you have to go past that?" " You look backwards because history teaches us the future." " we learn patterns.  the greatest indicator of future behaviour is past behaviour." " When are you going to realise he's not interested?" " I'm so..." "LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE" "Tell him you're interested." " I'm very interested." " A very good answer." " he's not frightened.  there is a place where physically you can look into the future." " You're not literally looking into the future." " Is it by the International Date Line?" " even though you're... that was stupid!" " Johnny."  He just doesn't like you." " Stephen." " That's fine." " right?  as I did a few months ago." " If I stood perfectly on that line..." "You'd drown." " Let's just say..." "LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE could I jump over the line and stop yourself from doing it?" " LAUGHTER Aside..." "You could warn yourself." " You could wave back and..." "You're thinking of Michael J Fox." " Can you jump back and stop yourself making mistakes?" " so it was two days later..." "I went on the 18th of December and I arrived on the 20th." " yet the world was two days older." " Part of the world was two days older." " you'd live twice the number of days of most humans to have lived for 160." " a 160-year-old man!" " What did he achieve?" " Nothing." " He had a lot of airline fuel." " Would you struggle to hold down a job?" " you would." " In terms of a pension?" " You could maybe do it if you lived on the Diomede Islands." " They're at the very top." " What's that area of water between Russia and...?" " Bering Strait." " Exactly." " We can zoom in there." " the greater and the lesser Diomedes.  could you jump over that time line with the rabbit... still be ill and die." ".. and jump back with it?" " I'm going to ask you what your opinion is." " What do you think?  I'd get a jet ski and stay on the line and go round the world." " Right." " Yes." " And stay at my perfect weight and this age for the rest of my life.  shouting advice and being mistaken for God." " I wouldn't be surprised if my parents came in and had a word with you and asked if Johnny could be taken to another class because they feel Rob isn't learning." " APPLAUSE" "That's exceptionally well expressed." " Hang on." " The International Date Line is wiggly." " The Greenwich Meridian isn't." " It passes round territories and island groups." " So two houses on the same street aren't on two different days?" " It tries to avoid going through land." " The closest it gets is there." " exactly." " you are looking at the past." " If you stand on Little One... you see them on Thursday." " And you're already drunk." " Yeah." " And they're hungover!" " Are you ready to move on?" " Yes." " So the best place to see into tomorrow..." "I'm tired of being odd." " bless!" " The best place to see into tomorrow is the Diomede Islands on opposite sides of the International Date Line." " Now try this." " Where does the extra square in this diagram come from?" " Those two are the same size and made up of elements of the same size." " a bit's missing." " yeah." " How can that be?" " Because some of the triangles..." "Have a look at it actually happening." " that goes there... like so." " can it?" " Yet my eyes tell me it is." " isn't it?" " Yeah." " Um..." "It is a cheat." " That's witchcraft!" " It is rather." " it was a magician who discovered this." " subtle cheat." " but they are curved.  so the two triangles are not similar." " the other has a slightly "up" line." " The eye assumes they're straight and is puzzled by that gap." " We thought you'd like that." " It's quite interesting." " I quite like it." " It's Curry's Paradox." " It's simply a trick." " The gap appears because the hypotenuse is imperceptibly bent." " All of which brings..." "Curry's Paradox?" " Yeah." " Should you buy the insurance?" " LAUGHTER so fingers on buzzers." " What's the best place to punch a shark?" " In a pub." " In a pub after loads of pork scratchings when he's really dehydrated" ""Don't want to mess with him!" " In the eye." " In the eye is right." " but the eye is the best place." " The eye or the gill." " More people in the world are bitten by New Yorkers every year than they are by sharks." " though!" " actually." " 81% of victims attacked and bitten by sharks suffered minor injuries." " How many New Yorkers a year bite someone's leg off?" " but they may cause rabies and other hideous diseases." " well..." "Certainly more people are killed in America by lavatory accidents than sharks." " What saddens me is 120 million sharks every year are killed by us human beings." " For their fins." " Just for their bloody fins!" " Just for what?" " Fins." " Shark fin soup." " The rest of their body is thrown in the water." " A shark fin is tasteless as well." " Chicken stock is added to it to give it flavour." " But I hate sharks." " They're beautiful animals." " They don't harm anybody." " Because you find them ugly?" " I think they're scary." " They're incredibly scary." " It is the enemy!" " They've got far more reason to be scared of a human than a human has of a shark." " Most mammals see human beings in the same way." " Look at the miracle of their teeth!" " That's extraordinary." " They have rows of teeth." " Their teeth go backwards." " they fall out and the next one literally comes forward." " They've got a conveyor belt of rows of teeth." " is how she's managed to do her lipstick under water." " It is rather." " Very pretty." " Your talk of razor-sharp teeth on a conveyor belt is making them sound quite sweet(!" ")" " so go for the gills or eyes." " How many legs does an octopus have?" " I mean..." "Ahh!" " Ahh!" " The clue is in "octo"." " Does it vary depending on the breed?" " Two." " Two legs is the right answer." " I saw one in panto." " APPLAUSE they use two of their tentacles for ambulatory gait so they could be said to have two legs and six arms." " How much of the moon can you see from the Ea-arth?" " LAUGHTER" "Well..." "You can see one side of it." " Yes." " There is this strange thing called libration which is like vibration beginning with an L." "It's a thing that was noted by quite a few of the early astronomers." " but if that's an acceptable way of defining a word... but beginning with an L." "Just so you could picture it in your heads." " Is that bad?" " I was with you already with "libration"." " I thought you might have heard it as "libation"." " then somebody came and said..." "It wasn't me!" " I'll tell you." " You get this jiggling effect." " you can see about 59% of the surface of the moon from Earth." " At one time?  rather than just 50." " And that cosmic wobble brings us to the end of another QI show." " It's time to check the form and see what scores we're dealing with." " It's absolutely fascinating." " It couldn't be "fascinating-er"!" " for third place " "Rob and Johnny on plus two!" " APPLAUSE is David Mitchell!" " APPLAUSE" "And it's 21 points for Alan Davies!" " Thank you." " CHEERING Alan and me." " Good night." " APPLAUSE" "Subtitles by Subtext for Red Bee Media Ltd 2010" "Email subtitling@bbc.co.uk"