007 = Big Thing Fans and Retirement Plans

**Big Thing Fans and Retirement Plans** is the seventh episode of A Problem Squared.

### Show Notes

Problems featured in this episode:

* What is the biggest big thing?
* Is the lottery a good retirement plan?
* Update on the £5,000 t-shirt.
* The taster data has popped.

Support us on Patreon! (Link)

Review us on apple podcasts: (Link)

Twitter: (Link)

Instagram: (Link)

This is the bear with very long legs. Very long. Legs. (Link)

Tallest Filing Cabinet on Earth (Link)

The difference between Financial Advice and Financial Guidance. (Link)

Get your own free financial guidance from here: (Link)

Bec's £5000 T-SHIRT (Link)

Here's Mr Squiggle, he's lots of fun for everyone. (Link)

Check out our instagram for photos. (Link)

### Summary

Matt and Bec acknowledged the debut of the podcast's new theme tune, created by Howard Carter.

Matt and Bec discussed the hilarity of objects that are much smaller or larger than one would expect them to be. Bec mentioned a related tweet of hers (and Sarah Jones's response). She also mentioned that she follows the Tiny Kitchen Twitter account. She and Matt then discussed Australia's big things, including the Big Rocking Horse. Matt sought to determine which out of these was the largest with respect to the object it represented (i.e. which object had the largest scale factor). The four contenders he considered were a big meat ant, a big macadamia nut, a big olive, and a big redback spider. Because of variance and uncertainty in the sizes of the objects represented, as well as uncertainty in the sizes of the big structures themselves, Matt did not choose one winner, but said the largest scale factor likely belonged to either the meat ant (with a factor of about 625) or the macadamia nut (with a factor of about 640). Bec said she preferred the macadamia nut, and gave Matt's solution a ding.

Two Patreon supporters sent in similar questions related to saving for retirement. The first asked if winning the lottery would give one enough money to retire, and the second asked for specifically maths people's advice on how much money one should save for retirement. Matt attempted to address both questions by determining if one million currency units would be enough for one's retirement. He assumed a retirement length of 30 years and discussed a few different methods one could use to prevent inflation from degrading the value of their savings during their retirement. Assuming one starts with one million currency units and earns exactly enough interest on their savings to match inflation, one would have about 33,000 currency units per year to live on during their retirement. But recognizing his lack of authority in giving financial advice, he offered a literal answer to the second supporter's question, saying that when maths people are asked how much one should save for retirement, they say to listen to the financial people. Rather than give Matt's solution a ding, Bec gave it a "dong" for legal reasons.

### AOB & Updates

Bec gave an update on her £5,000 t-shirt since the previous episode, mentioning several things people had asked her to draw in their squares on the shirt, including Matt's recursive request to draw the shirt itself on the shirt.

As a follow-up to the previous episode, Matt and Bec discussed the data they had received from listeners on how long toasters take on various settings, and if changing the setting while the toaster was on affected the toasting time. They believed they could not draw any meaningful conclusions from the data, because it lacked consistency. Instead of conclusions, Bec painted original artworks to send to the people who collected and submitted data to help attempt to solve the problem.

Bec also mentioned they were still looking for photos of listener's visits to big things (like Australia's big things), as discussed in the previous episode.

Matt mentioned they had changed the Patreon in response to listener feedback, and had created a new tier which gave supporters access to the I'm a Wizard bonus podcast.