QI (2003–…): Season 13, Episode 5 - Maths - full transcript
Stephen Fry masters the maths with Sandi Toksvig, Aisling Bea, Susan Calman and Alan Davies.
Go-oo-oo-od evening, good evening,
good evening, good evening,
good evening, good evening,
and welcome to QI,
where tonight we're doing the maths
and making the money.
Let's meet our mathematical
masterminds.
The irrational Aisling Bea.
The recurring Susan Calman.
A prime example, Sandi Toksvig.
And the square root of f-all,
Alan Davies.
So, let's get their numbers.
Susan goes:
♪ One, two, three, four... ♪
Aisling goes:
♪ Two, four, six, eight... ♪
Sandi goes:
# Five-seven-oh-five! #
And Alan goes:
CHILD: 'Two twos are six!
'Two threes are seven.
Two fours are 24.'
Well done.
It's getting worse, you know.
Now, before we start, we've already
done a little market research
to see if many heads are
better than one.
We've asked a random selection
of our studio audience to guess
how many sweets are in this jar,
and we want each member of the panel
to do the same, right?
So you can write down your thoughts.
I'll come back to you
at the end of the show
and ask you for your best guesses.
The winner will get to call
themselves Smarty- Pants.
Can I just check that they
are actually sweets first of all?
Oh, yes, they really are individual
chocolate beans.
I've done it already. Wow! Done.
You can put it away
till the end of the show.
Now, what was this man very good
at doing with his fingers?
This man being the man
sitting down with the crown.
He kind of looks like he's
doing the Macarena,
but I don't think
they used to do that.
Is it a card trick? Is it a "nothing
up my sleeves", is it one of those?
It looks like that.
AISLING: Is the man in the middle
Jesus?
I know that face from somewhere.
We're in the Old Testament.
Oh, are we? Well...
The man in the middle is Daniel.
He was in a lion's den,
if you remember.
He was in prison
and he was released from prison
because he had the ability to
interpret...?
Dreams. Dreams. Dreams.
And the King whose dreams
he interpreted was?
Happy.
Asleep. N, N, N...
Nestafarius.
Nebuchadnezzar.
Nebuchadnezzar.
Oh, I was close.
Yes, yes.
Nebuchadnezzar, who was king of?
All things around him.
Babylon. He was.
Yes. And the Babylonians were
very good
at doing what with their fingers?
Gardening.
The Hanging Gardens of Babylon.
What's the theme... Yes, no, you're
right. What's... Green-fingered.
Babylon is... What's the theme
of our show tonight?
Babylon is where...
Adding up, adding up.
Maths. Yeah. Maths.
Babylonians, I won't say
they invented mathematics, exactly,
but they had a counting
system on their fingers which was
different from ours.
How's our counting system work?
One, two, three, four, five...
One, two, three, four, five, six,
seven, eight, nine, ten. Phew!
And therefore, because of that...
Decimal, decimal. We have
a decimal system, based on ten.
But they have a different system,
they counted on their fingers
differently.
- Oh, they did the...
- One, two, three...
They went one, two, three, four...
They went the JOI NTS of the fingers.
Yeah, the joints. Yes. One, two,
three. Four, five, six. Seven,
eight, nine, Ten, 11, 12.
And then they'd put their thumb up.
13, 14, 15.
16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21,
22, 23, 24.
Put their finger up.
And so on, until they got to 60,
which is five iterations of 12.
After that you'd need
another person.
Yes, exactly. Just as we would need
another person after ten.
That's the point. And they had
a very successful system.
Why is that important
and influential?
Well, it's the hours of the day,
is it?
Hours of the day,
60 minutes in an hour.
60 seconds in a minute.
But the 24 divides into more than
any other number,
divides by two, three, four, six,
eight...
Oh, Alan, you're on fire!
..and 12.
Yeah! Absolutely right.
Good boy!
We also have 360...
Degrees.
..degrees in a full circle.
12 inches to a foot.
12 is so much more pleasing,
I think. It is.
Well, it's factorisable,
and therefore it's
a much more natural way.
It seems like it was some chap
with more time on his hands.
Ten is easy - you look and think,
"There's ten," straight away.
He's thinking, "But we could be more
creative," and he's working out...
Isn't he? He's got more time.
But they didn't have the internet.
They were just
looking at their hands, going,
"I wish I had a Game Boy.
May as well count my knuckles."
I've got a question.
Yeah?
When you want to say to someone,
just one, I just want one.
You know, across a room.
Yeah.
Get me two, get me two.
How do you do that?
Do you have to go like that?
If you go like that it means three,
you get three of everything.
It's a very interesting question.
I'm only going to tell you this
three more times.
If you were Roman,
that would be five, wouldn't it?
It's very confusing.
Yeah, the Romans, that's five. Yeah.
There you are, that's it.
Now, last night,
I tossed two heads at the same time.
What are the chances? What?
I don't understand, what are you
doing? No, no, what? No, no.
Yeah, no, it's fine. No, no,
I misunderstood, I misunderstood.
It's completely fine.
Two coins at the same time?
Yeah, a coin here, a coin there.
I just want to know what
the odds are.
Because I'm tempted to say
one in three, but I bet it's not.
Well, what...
SUSAN: It's seven in 94.
No, you've got two coins, right.
Yeah.
There are four possible outcomes.
There's heads-heads.
Heads-tails.
Yeah.
Tails-tails.
And tails-heads.
Tails-heads.
Tails-heads. Yeah.
Yeah. So it's one in four.
One in four. One in four.
It's one in four.
Does it have anything to do with
whether you normally toss
with your right hand
or toss with your left hand?
That's assuming it's an equal toss.
The thing is, it's not that difficult
a thing to understand mathematically,
but this was given to Members of
Parliament as a question in 2012.
60% of MPs got it wrong.
Did that include
the Chancellor of the Exchequer?
Well, there was
a split on party lines.
47% of the Tories got it wrong.
And 77% of Labour MPs got it wrong.
Now, listen, can I...? I should have
said this at the beginning,
I have to be very honest,
I am phobic about maths.
No, I understand.
I was like you, I was also...
My father's a mathematician,
a physicist,
and I was phobic about maths.
Yeah. I always said, "Oh, no, I'm
allergic to maths, I can't do it."
But, actually, it's very beautiful,
isn't it, it's really...
Oh, now I love it.
I wish one could be turned on to it.
Yeah. I'm going to get
turned on tonight to maths.
All right.
My thinking, Stephen, is if it's a
head and a tail, that's one outcome.
Yeah. And then a tail and a tail
and a head and a head.
I'm not counting which coin
does a thing.
I'm still sticking with three.
Ah, then you think it's
one in three.
And you're still wrong.
But I'd give them a break, though,
because if I was
in parliament and I was like,
"Listen, I know you said you're
going to fix the housing system
"and you're going to
sort my benefits,
"but the big question is -
I've got two coins.
"I've got really good hands,
I can flip them at the same time.
"What's the probability
of each hand?"
Like, if he could pull that out
and go, "You're a witch!"
and then... You wouldn't trust them.
Do you know the story
of the professor of mathematics
at the University of Warwick,
Jeffrey Hamilton,
giving a lecture
in the 1970s on this topic?
He was talking about probabilities
and about it either coming down
heads or coming down tails
and how you could calculate that
it was going to be either one
or the other,
and he tossed the coin in the air
and it fell from his hand and it
rolled across the lecture theatre
and ended up exactly on its edge.
So I like the fact there is a chance
element in all these things.
Always, absolutely. Yeah.
And of course, ordinary people
who are not MPs are just as fallible.
In fact, 74% got it wrong - only 3%
more stupid than the Labour MPs.
At least then they're representing
the common man. Yeah.
There was a third-pound burger, the
A&E company, the rival to McDonalds.
People preferred it to the McDonalds
version, but it failed.
When people were asked why
they didn't buy it, they said,
well, it was a con.
Oh, they thought it was less
than a quarter pound?
They thought you got less meat.
AMERICAN ACCENT: It's only a third,
it's not a quarter!
And three is a smaller
number than four,
therefore a third of a pound must
be less than a quarter of a pound.
Oh, my God. And this is the most
powerful nation on Earth.
This is also the nation where nine
out of ten high school graduates
think that Joan of Arc
is Noah's wife, so... Yes.
But on the subject of probability,
I've got this.
It's really interesting,
it's a probability issue.
You want a pack of cards each.
I can't catch.
Oh, well caught. Well held.
We've got some for you. All right.
I want you to take the cards out
and give them a good shuffle,
good shuffle.
I'm going to do the same.
I've just shuffled them.
Beautifully done.
Sandi's, Sandi's, Sandi's...
Look at her, she's like a croupier.
Jesus!
Yeah. Very good.
Oh, no.
Very good.
Yes, I've shuffled,
I've riffle shuffled. Yeah.
I'm not a gambler. OK. OK,
so can you shove your cards in here?
Oh, all right, then.
All right. Thank you.
I'll give it a good shake.
Is this going to be one of those
Derren Brown ones where we
all can't eat for a week,
or something like that?
No, nothing like that.
There you are. There you go.
All right. It's just about
probability, it's not a big deal.
Is there anything you can't
turn your hand to, Stephen?
Now it's magic.
You haven't seen me
turn my hand to anything yet.
And I'll put my cards in, as well.
There we go. All right.
And give it all a good shake.
All right, so you take one card out.
Don't look, and if you can put it
close to your chest,
but not, no, no, don't look.
I've looked, I know what it is.
Well, it doesn't matter. All right.
The point is to shove it
close to your chest so that that's
where you're going to...
That's not your chest, darling.
The reason to shove it close
to your chest is so that
when you reveal it,
it's camera height.
Oh, right. That's all it is.
All right. So take one out, feel it,
yeah, random. All right.
Magic. Yeah, very good, very good.
All right. I'll do the same.
All right. All right.
I'll do the same. OK, so the point
is it's about probability.
The first card you choose,
it could be anything.
The second card, the probability
it's going to be the same card
is quite small.
And it's even less likely that
three cards will be the same,
and so on and so on.
The chances that you'd get all
the cards the same
is about one in two billion.
Now there is a possibility,
but a very unlikely possibility, that
two of the cards will be the same.
OK. So Sandi, you'll reveal
your card.
Yours is the six of clubs,
all right. Me?
OK, and you reveal yours.
Oh, my God!
Oh!
Now Alan. Oh! You reveal yours.
Oh, no, surely not.
No, oh, my God! And mine as well!
Oh, there you go!
Funny, how can that happen?
There it is.
Burn him! He's a witch.
Yeah. There you are. OK.
He's a witch.
That's a very good trick.
Thank you very much. That's very
good. That's terribly good.
All right, there we are.
Fantastic, honestly.
That was really good.
Oh, you're sweet, thank you.
It was like Paul Daniels
was in the room.
If only he was in the bag.
So the chances were about one in
two billion that you'd get all
the cards the same
and it just happened this evening.
I'm amazed. So, tell me now,
do animals count?
Do you mean in life,
in a sort of sociological...?
They count very much, in that sense.
They count.
But do they count in the sense
of actually...?
From what I know, there are
some animals that can count.
Yes, you're right.
They all lined up for Noah.
I'm just saying. Yeah.
Yeah, and that's a fact story,
a true fact story.
That's a fact story, so...
Yeah. You don't hear them fighting.
Have you any thoughts on this
side of the room?
Well, I can imagine
a monkey can count.
Surely.
There must be a rhesus monkey with
an accountancy degree,
there must be. Yeah.
But you're spot on. Not only
monkeys, but monkeys certainly are.
Apparently chicks when they hatch
can show some propensity towards
being able to count.
One, two, three, four, five, chicks.
Because you can see their heads
counting, can't you, they're like
one, two, three, four.
Well, let me give you a list of some
of the animals that have been
spotted counting.
Pigeons, parrots, raccoons, ferrets,
rats, salamanders, honeybees,
monkeys and apes
have all been seen to count,
add and subtract.
Rhesus monkeys -
funny you should mention them -
at Columbia University have shown
they can arrange up to nine objects
in the correct numerical sequence.
It's always rhesus monkeys.
Do you not feel sorry for them?
They're always saying, oh, let's
teach them to speak French, or...
Yeah, you're right.
Crows and parrots can count up
to five or six.
Cormorants can count up to seven.
Now how do you know that?
They take seven fish
back to the nest.
Not quite that.
Something like that.
Actually, Chinese fishermen have
trained them to catch fish for them.
And what they do is
they put a ring round their throat,
so that they can't swallow
fish themselves.
So they catch the fish, but dump
them on the deck of the boat.
And how they've trained them is
that once they get past seven, on
the eighth they get rid of the ring
and the cormorant can catch its own.
I love that,
when they make up their own mind.
There used to be a bear at
Regent's Park Zoo in the 1920s
that was fed biscuits by
the general public.
And on Mondays it was half price
and so they got a lot more biscuits.
And so on Tuesdays the bear used
to take day the off.
Yes, that's it.
He counted days, or she
counted days - ursine calendar.
It's brilliant.
But I suppose it's when in need,
like you wouldn't be needing
to count up stuff if you're a bear,
like, you're not...
But sometimes you'll see,
maybe they need to count how many
kids they have.
Yes, yeah.
And they can tell if one of them
has gone missing.
Although ducks are rubbish
at that, they are. I live on
a house boat for many, many years,
and we're forever trying to get
baby ducks to join back up
with Mother, who'd just gone off.
She was off down to Battersea.
Sandi, loads of your stories of what
you do for entertainment are like,
we used to try and convince ducks
to hang out with each other...
I suffer from a fatal condition,
Aisling,
which is posh voice, no money.
That sounds absolutely awful,
I would hate to have that.
What's funny about this, though,
is that birds have got tiny,
tiny brains. Really, you would
expect nothing of a bird. Mmm.
And yet some of the primates have
got quite big brains.
You'd think they'd be more
than counting and yet
they don't seem to be doing more
than count to five, like the birds.
I don't think it's anything
to do with the brain
because I remember
being in the desert in Africa
and there were ants I was shown who
apparently work out their shadow
and the angle of the sun in order to
get their path back home.
Now, really, that's
kind of trigonometry, isn't it?
And you wouldn't think
an ant would be doing it.
But they actually use their own
shadow to work out...
to calculate their route.
Yes, and there are mosquito fish,
which is a kind of carp,
and they are able to count, it seems.
If they are harassed by a male
they take refuge in a shoal
of other mosquito fish.
They can count on their female...
Yeah, but they detect the difference
between just one or two or
two or three or three
or four. They can't tell
the difference between four or five,
so, you know, it's basically
a small amount they can tell
and they hide in the largest number.
It may be because the male
mosquito fish has the largest penis
of any fish relative to its body.
Oh, God.
It's 70% of its length.
And it's barbed.
I don't think it's possible
to come on this programme
and not discuss the penis.
No, it isn't. Not while I've got
a breath in my body, Sandi!
Now, why don't bankers give a damn
what people think of them?
Because they're psychopaths
and they lack empathy.
Something like one in ten people who
work on Wall Street have
psychopathic tendencies. Apparently.
Yes, it's true, yes.
But that leaves 90% perfectly fine,
doesn't it? Yeah.
It must be because in their world
it all seems fine, what they do.
That's probably true. But there's
a funny thing about money.
Are you aware of that
Hollywood phrase?
I think it was William Goldman -
"follow the money".
You follow the money
when you watch a movie.
So if you see a movie
and someone, you know,
has a suitcase of money, everyone...
You can register it,
watch their eyes move -
people watch the money.
You can't help it, it's very human.
You know, the first time you get
a load of cash in your hand,
which occasionally I have,
it's just... That's the point.
You know that scene in...
What's the one where Demi Moore
rolls around the bed on the money?
Indecent Proposal. And she puts...
I've done that...
Which William Goldman was...
..with 40 quid. But it does feel...
If you get a... In change.
And that's the point of our...
That's the point of our question.
The physical proximity to money
changes the way you feel.
It seems that you can prove that
being close to money makes you
care less about what
people think of you.
That must be quite a new thing,
cos money's quite new.
There used to be like... You used
to, when you had a good night,
come home and throw chickens
on yourself
because that was how you...
But now it's cash.
But let me take you through
the experiment.
Test subjects were asked who
they wanted to work with.
They were told randomly either that
everyone else wanted to work
with them or they were told
that nobody did.
So half the subjects felt rejected
by their peers, half felt reinforced.
Now, some of the subjects had been
previously exposed to money
and they were just told it was
a test for manual dexterity -
could you count out this
money very fast?
And the other half were asked
the same question,
but it was bits of blank paper.
The ones who had handled the money
were not offended
when told that nobody wanted
to work with them.
The ones that had handled
the paper were offended.
I've got a Scottish fiver.
Coming here, trying to buy England!
It's a status thing, maybe it makes
you feel more important. Exactly.
I think it can make you feel safer.
Even if it isn't yours, yeah.
Because you can buy your way
out of any trouble, as we all know.
It's just, you just buy your
way out, as I... Yep.
So it makes you feel, erm,
safer, I think, perhaps. Yeah.
It's weird, isn't it?
And they also used money to test
people feigning blindness.
If someone says, "I'm blind,"
they go, "All right,
let's test your blindness."
"Can't see anything."
"Read this." "Can't see it."
Then you wave a £50 note in front
of them, they go, "Oh, wow."
A £5 doesn't work,
but a £50 note is almost impossible
for you not to look at it.
This is clearly a test not done by
the NHS, who don't have a £50 note.
Well, there was an ophthalmic
optician who didn't, so instead
he put a Post-it Note on his
forehead saying "go fuck yourself".
And similarly,
people couldn't help looking at it.
Now, what illegal substance can be
found in the pockets
of most of our audience?
How did it get there? Cocaine.
Cos it's on banknotes.
Is the right answer. Yes!
Yes, absolutely.
Most of our audience...
Most of our audience have residue
of cocaine in their...
I can see everyone shuffling
around...
They're licking their money.
More than 99% of banknotes in
circulation have detectable cocaine.
What?! Yes.
It's why drug dogs sometimes have
difficulty in identifying.
Cos I get the sleeper train home
and there's always a drug dog there.
Not for me, it's just a...
It's because it's a good way
of smuggling drugs up to...
up north, the sleeper train.
You don't want to go on the train.
You want to get an actual mule.
Nobody is going to expect somebody
to have drugs on a mule
because it's too obvious, isn't it?
I'd love somebody arriving
into Glasgow on a mule.
On a mule. Nothing to see.
AISLING: All right, lads?
Can you clean it off? I mean,
I don't want it. Not really, no.
Paper. Put a hairdryer over it and
you can blow the dust off, maybe.
That won't do it.
There used to be a hotel, Stephen,
in New York, where the concierge
was famous for washing the coins.
If you didn't like the coins
in your pocket, I believe
he would put them in a jar
and wash them for you.
I can't think which one it was.
Are there hotels where
they don't do that?
I don't know, I have no money,
I have no idea.
Now, let's leave the filthy moolah.
What do moon-starers do,
and why might
they call themselves that?
Well, the clue would appear
to be in the question.
Yeah.
It's too obvious, I'd say
they watch bare arses all the time.
Yeah. Well, moon-starers is
an anagram of astronomers.
Yay! Points to you. Good work.
Good work!
That was damn fast.
It's not an anagram,
it's an aptagram. Sorry.
Oh! You're right, yeah.
I'll never win,
Sandi Toksvig, never!
What's an aptagram, Sandi?
An aptagram is
an anagram that, where the word
means roughly the same.
Like Apple Macintosh
and laptop machines.
Yeah. Semolina - is no meal.
Yeah.
Yes, moon-starer is
an anagram of astronomer.
In what time in history was that
a relevant thing,
the idea of anagrams
and astronomers?
Well, it must have been
around the time of Galileo, surely.
It was indeed,
the early 17th century.
But he wouldn't have spoken English,
so why would he have
changed his name to moon-starer?
Yeah, this is an example
of an anagram. He...
Oh!
He didn't use English anagrams,
he used...?
Gree...Latin.
Latin, very good. There he is.
Why would they have used ars magna,
great art, in that?
Oh, and that's moon is the ars.
And ars magna is?
And then magna is...
Is an anagram of anagrams.
ALL: Oh.
So, yes. But anyway, why...
Well, because the Church took
a dim view of...
Not because of the Church,
although the Church did take a dim
view of what he did.
I like his very casual
approach to the telescope.
He's just sort of... Yeah.
Now I'm going to have a cigarette
and now I'm going to look again.
Was it just to make the whole
thing more fun?
If only it was that.
In fact, even in his day,
there was scientific rivalry.
So if you discovered something
and you wanted to tell a friend
about it and you didn't want
anyone else to intercept the news,
you gave it in anagram form.
Oh, it's like codes at school.
Yes, it is. Exactly that, yeah.
Do you think they ever used to,
like, rub around the telescope with
ink and then run away
and then he'll go, "Oh, what's that?
"Oh, no, my eye!
Oh, that's trickery."
Who was his great rival and friend?
Is it an anagram?
I'm going to say Copernicus.
No, no, it wasn't Copernicus.
It was Kepler.
And he sent him an anagram
because he had discovered
the rings of Saturn in 1610.
No, not Saturn, that's Uranus!
Oh, yeah. Sorry, I'm
laughing at the wrong one.
It's not the right planet,
but it's still funny.
I knew one of them was funny.
And he sent Kepler this.
Oh, my! Ah, "smaismrm..."
Oh. Yeah. Yes.
"Nugttauriras..." Great.
Stick that where the sun
don't shine.
It's pretty obvious what he's
putting there. Yeah.
That's... I feel embarrassed asking
you to say what it is.
I feel bad.
It's more important that
the audience work it out.
Yeah, you're right. I don't want
to spoil the joy for them all.
You're right.
It's a Latin phrase,
it actually is an anagram...
I have discovered
the rings of Saturn.
Yes, it is that. Altissimum planetam
tergeminum observavi.
OK. "I have observed the highest
planet to be triplets."
Seen it. I know. Does he mean he's
seen the moons of it, or something?
What does he mean by triplets?
He thought they were moons, but in
fact we now know them to be rings.
That must have been so exciting.
Do you not think?
It must have been so thrilling,
just that one moment
when that suddenly has happened
and nobody else has seen it.
I think it's quite clever, but
they worked out they're planets
because they were moving across
the sky and the stars weren't.
I think it was just the first
thing that made them
think something was afoot.
Oh, I know, and that's what...
That one's moved.
Why has that star moved?
It's not a star, it's Jupiter. Yeah.
And planet is from the Greek for
wanderer, it means a wanderer. Oh.
They do this thing, I don't know
if they're still doing it,
but they did it for a long time,
once a month in Reykjavik,
the government would turn out
all the street lighting
and there would be a lecture
on the public radio about the stars.
And people would go outside.
Oh, brilliant.
And they got rid of all
the ambient light and you could look
up and listen to the lecture
about what you were looking at.
Do you not think that would be a
wonderful thing? That is brilliant.
Yeah. Yeah, I love that.
But in terms of anagrams,
this isn't an anagram, it's actually
a limerick composed by someone,
which I invite you to recite to me.
See if you can.
Uh?
Yes. That's a shock, isn't it?
Yes. And you can do it.
Can you? Yes. Yep.
Yes, you can, it is a limerick.
OK. OK. Right.
You have to ask yourself what these
number are, in fact.
They have some other...
A dozen and 12 dozen.
Ah! Yeah, 12,
but 144 is also called a...?
A gross.
So a dozen, a gross, a score,
plus three times the square
root of four...
..divided by seven.
You're all right, you're doing well.
Plus five.
Well, calm down.
I might have to slap you.
Yes!
Are you all right?
The episode of QI where
Stephen just slaps me.
It's not enough to be a limerick,
it has to be true.
What's nine squared?
81. Yeah.
And as you know,
x the square root of four ÷ 7
+ 5 x 11 is 81.
No, 81. So, say it again now
as a limerick. You can do it now.
Yes, yes. Go on.
Go on, then, Susan. Argh!
A dozen... A dozen...
A dozen, a gross and a score
Plus three times
the square root of four
Divided by seven
Plus five times eleven
Equals nine squared plus
not a bit more.
There you are, well done!
It was a guy called Leigh Mercer who
came up with that. It's rather good.
12 + 1 = 11 + 2. It does.
Yeah, but in what other ways
does 12 + 1 = 11 + 2?
Oh, is it an anagram, then?
They're anagrams of each other.
"Twelve plus one" written out
is an anagram of "eleven plus two".
Wow, you really have had too much
time on your hands.
These were worked out
by Nelson Mandela on Robben Island.
I think they're rather fabulous,
so there. They're marvellous.
All right, OK.
Now, what's the biggest mistake
anyone's ever made with a pencil?
Hmm.
Oh, I say.
Oh, no, it's got to be
a miscalculation or something.
Well, ah, you'd... "Ah, aah..."
"Yeah. Aah..."
MORE IMPRESSION: "Aah, aah,
now, now..."
Lead poisoning? Sucking on the lead?
"Steady."
It's not a, it's not
a historical miscalculation?
No, it's astonishing.
It took place in New York...
..in the '90s, I think it was.
I'll tell you exactly...
All right, Stephen?
Was that a pencil there?
Yeah. Just testing...
Were you miscalculating with
a pencil there, sir?
I eased it in.
I eased it in and it was all fine.
Chapter four,
I eased it in and it was all fine.
In 1998, there was a problem
with pencils.
"Problem with pencils."
"Problem with pencils."
"A pencil problem," basically, yeah.
There's no reason for you
to guess what it was.
I went to the Pencil Museum
in Keswick. What a museum that is!
Ah. No, it's seriously...
They've got a hall of fame of famous
people that have visited.
Phill Jupitus is on it. I've been
there. It is a very good museum.
It's a fabulous place.
Ah, fabulous. It's not that.
It was pencils given to children.
Ah, drugs. Was it the one...?
Time for drugs!
I know what it was,
they printed, for children,
pencils that said
"do not use drugs" on them,
and when they sharpened them,
eventually it said "use drugs."
Oh, you've dropped one. Ah.
You're right.
Very good, very good.
Here they are.
That's "hil-ah-rious".
They say here,
"Too cool to do drugs."
You shave it and it goes,
"cool to do drugs."
"Cool to do drugs."
And then you shave it again
and it goes, "do drugs."
Yes! Do drugs.
There you are.
It was a bit of a mistake,
but well done, Sandi. So,
other mistakes include, in 1945,
the Arkansas legislature accidentally
repealed all their laws at once.
With a pencil?
No, they had an act with the words -
"All laws and parts of laws,
"and particularly Act 33 of the Acts
of 1941, are hereby repealed."
They just meant the particular one,
but it legally meant all their laws.
And then in 2003, the German agency
responsible for TV licences
sent a series of reminders to
St Walpurga, to pay her licence fee.
She died in 777.
Never having paid for her licence!
No. It didn't stop them asking.
And then in the
Australian Morning Bulletin,
which of course is called
The Bully,
they said there was an error
printed in a story titled Pigs
Float Down The Dawson, on page
11 of yesterday's Bully. The story,
by reporter Daniel Burdon, said
that "more than 30,000 pigs were
floating down the Dawson River."
Actually, what the owner
of the piggery said was,
that "30 sows and pigs".
"We'd like to
apologise for the error."
Rather tragically, a group
of volunteers in 1992 in France,
who had volunteered to get
rid of graffiti in the caves.
And they had a great big scrub away
at a cave and... Oh...
Oh, no, not ancient cave paintings!
..got rid of a 15,000-year-old
bison painting. Oh, no!
Exactly!
You'd be really kicking yourself
after that. Yeah. Oops! Yeah.
I was telling you about the law
in Ireland recently.
There were two within the one week.
The first one was where drugs were
legal for 48 hours. Oh, yes.
And people, like, just went nuts.
Well, they didn't go nuts.
The said, "We're going to go nuts,
but we won't really,
"just in case we get in trouble."
And then the other one was
the translation of the Marriage Act
in English, the translation
in Gaelic... Mmm.
..technically,
because of the way it was worded,
forbid marriage between
a man and a woman.
It said "marriage
is between men or women,
"but it's not between
men and women."
So it technically made
all marriage illegal.
They had to twist that one as well.
So, now,
why did a failure to sell mirrors
massively improve modern media?
Because you can't put
a mirror on a selfie stick.
Is that it?
Well, selfies, oddly enough,
are rather close to it.
A medieval version
of selfies, at least. Medieval?
We're going back to
the mid-15th century.
People used to go on...?
Pilgrimages.
Pilgrimages.
And a pilgrimage was a visit to a
holy place, where there would be...
Sandwiches.
There would be sandwiches,
but what were you going to see?
Some kind of shrine or something.
Shrine, a shrine, relics.
Shrine. Oh, relics. Relics.
I love a good relic.
Bones, material,
bits of beard, bits of body,
bits of the true cross,
bits of all kinds of stuff.
Porn. Yeah. And they were
so popular that you might go there
and you couldn't even get
close to it.
So you'd hold up a selfie stick,
as it were.
It wouldn't be a selfie stick.
It would be a box with a lid
and the lid was a mirror.
And the mirror would see the relic.
And the beams and the rays
would hit the mirror
and go down into the box and you'd
close the box and you'd go home
and it contained the images, in your
head at least, of the holy relics.
Did it, really? Seriously,
one of the best pieces
of medieval marketing I've ever
heard. Yeah.
Yes. And this particular man
was making mirrors.
And he made these mirrors
for Aachen,
and Aachen had Mary's robe
from the night Jesus was born.
It had Jesus' swaddling clothes.
It had the cloth in which John
the Baptist's head was wrapped,
after he was decapitated.
The loincloth Jesus
wore on the cross.
So this person we're talking
about made mirrors for pilgrims to
go to Aachen, but unfortunately
he didn't sell any.
So he went back to
his home town of Mainz,
and in 1450 he produced something
that changed the world for ever.
A print, a stamp, a print version,
Stephen, of what they'd see in...
Print...
And it was stamped. Postcards.
No, Sandi,
that's kind of my idea. No.
- Souvenir mugs.
- No.
He created printing.
He created the printed word.
MAN IN AUDIENCE: Johan Gutenberg.
Thank you, audience.
He's Johannes Gutenberg. In 1450,
he created the Gutenberg Bible,
and then other books he created.
Oh, yes.
It changed the world totally.
But unfortunately,
the mistake was he went to basically
a kind of Dragons' Den,
who funded him.
He took a wine press,
he converted the wine press into
a letter press, to create books.
And then he had a Duncan Bannatyne
character, "I'm out. Out."
But his investors...
"Don't like it, never take off,
I liked your mirrors better.
"No. I'm out." Well, they,
unfortunately they took all
the money, the investors,
the dragons took all the money.
He died destitute in 1468. Very sad.
The most influential figure
of his age, in those terms.
One of the first printers in
Britain was called Wynkyn de Worde.
Yes, he was. Don't you think
that's so delightful?
There's a society, a Wynkyn society.
Wynkyn society, yeah.
And then, of course,
Caxton was the other great one.
But, yeah.
Before he invented
the printing press,
Gutenberg was a failed mirror-maker.
And so we enter the mad world
of mangled misconceptions that we
call General Ignorance.
And, given the show's theme,
we've even spent a bit of money
on a mathematical machine.
Ooh!
Yeah, you'll be impressed with that.
Ooh.
It looks like a happy face
that's taken a lot of drugs.
It does a bit, doesn't it? Yeah.
It's lovely.
But what is it, Stephen?
Well, I just want to know who first
proved the theorem
that this model demonstrates.
Pythagoras. Pythagoras.
Oh!
My grandfather,
who was from Hungary,
always pronounced it "Peeta-goras."
"So that at school doing
the mathematics,
"are you studying Peeta-goras?"
And I thought this man,
Peter Goras, who was Peter?
No, it wasn't
Peter Goras who first proved it.
Oh. What is it, the theorem
that needs to be discussed here?
A squared equals B squared
plus C squared.
Yeah, yeah, it's... The sum
of the two, the squared
of two smaller sides.
The sum on the two squares
is equal to the sum on the
hypotenuse, exactly.
Yeah, that big one should
go into the other two.
So you can see here, the yellow,
that's the triangle.
These are its two sides.
And these are the squares
of the two sides,
they are literally geometrically
expressed as squares,
rather than just mathematically,
as if that was, say, X,
it's just not X squared, but it is
literally the square, there.
And there's Y squared.
And it's supposedly equal to
Z squared, which is
the longest side, the hypotenuse.
Because here's the right angle,
here.
These are not right angles,
obviously.
And there's that.
How can we show they're equal?
Well, there are all kinds of ways,
but here's one way.
Drumroll, please.
Oh, yes.
All right, let's go.
Ooh.
Oh, that's very clever.
There it goes,
pouring into the first square.
Wow! Expensive.
Is it going to fill it up?
Wow. Shut the front door!
Oh, Well, it definitely
equals X squared. Yes.
Does it equal Y squared as well?
I need to go to the toilet.
There's Y squared,
it's filling up, it's filling up,
it's filling up, it's full.
And there it is.
Hurray!
Isn't that satisfactory?
Highly satisfactory.
It's the first theorem
most people learn at school.
It's Pythagoras's theorem by name,
but it wasn't, it was used many,
many years before him - people used
it to build buildings and Euclid
demonstrated it before him.
But we give it
the name of Pythagoras.
Who is Euclid, then?
He was even before?
He's the father of mathematics.
Euclid?
Oh, was he? Yeah. Yeah.
Oh, Euclid, yes.
Before him, nothing.
The greatest. Yeah,
well done to Euclid, we love Euclid.
So, let's take this model away.
Let's hear it for him.
Now, by the end of Elizabeth I's
reign, there was
a really extraordinary
number of English dukes.
Five points for every one
you can name.
OK. Norfolk.
Cambridge. Cambridge?
Erm, Hazzard. Dukes Of Hazzard.
Hazzard?
Is it some devilish trick
and there aren't any at all?
I said it was an
extraordinary number.
The extraordinary number is none,
exactly. Ah! Well done.
No dukes.
Can't believe I fell for that one.
By the end of her reign, there were
certainly no royal dukes
because royal dukes are the issue of
the monarch, essentially, and there
weren't any because Queen Elizabeth
was a virgin queen and didn't marry.
And there were also no other dukes.
Are dukes always
the children of the queen or king?
Royal dukes are,
but other dukes aren't.
We have dukes of Marlborough,
dukes of Buccleuch and so on.
And they were always into music
and that's where you get
the duke box, which is...?
I think you've understood it 100%.
Yep.
There weren't very many peers
by the time Queen Elizabeth died.
There was one marquess,
18 earls and 37...
Wigan Pier.
That hadn't been built yet,
so even that didn't exist.
I know, it was a shocking thing,
but, yeah.
The best peerage joke connected
to Queen Elizabeth I
was told by John Aubrey,
whose diaries are fantastic.
This involves the Earl of Oxford,
who some people think wrote
the plays of Shakespeare.
He didn't.
He wrote this - "this Earl of Oxford,
making his low obeisance to
"Queen Elizabeth, happened to let
a fart, at which he was
"so abashed and ashamed that he went
to travel seven years.
"On his return,
the queen welcomed him home and said,
"'My Lord, I had forgot the fart."'
Well, there you are. Yeah, good.
In the early 17th century, there
were no dukes in England at all.
And that is very nearly all we
have time for. However, we still
have to see if the QI audience has
solved the sweet-jar challenge.
Because what we wanted to do was
to take their average.
The idea is that we would
arrive at the wisdom of crowds.
It was a man called Francis Galton
who first came up with that phrase.
He went to a fair where there
was weighing the pig
and no-one individually got it right,
but he noticed that
if you added up all the guesses
and divided them to get the average
it was exactly on the weight. Wow.
We're hoping we'll get that here.
So, reveal yourselves.
What have you come up with?
I've put 1,000 underneath,
though, cos I realised I'd really
miscalculated when I saw Sandi's.
Right. So 1,000 is my answer.
1,966. 12. Yeah, just in case.
Just in case what?
Just in case what
I see isn't what it appears to be.
Or...
Ah, clever!
Clever, clever, clever.
OK, so, the average of
the audience's guess is 2,412.
The actual number of Smarties
in that jar is 3,890.
So, the audience are the closest.
Congratulations.
And that concerns
the wisdom of crowds.
So, the time has come to tally up
the scores.
Oh, my actual, oh, my actual.
So, in first place,
with a magnificent two points,
it's Aisling Bea!
Oh!
And with an earth-shattering zero,
it's Sandi Toksvig.
A more than respectable minus six,
Susan Calman.
And on his terms, really quite
handsome, minus 43,
Alan Davies.
So, it's goodnight from
Susan, Sandi, Aisling, Alan and me.
And I'll leave you with this dark
observation from Joseph Stalin.
My favourite dictator.
"The people
who cast the votes decide nothing.
"The people who count the votes
decide everything." Goodnight.
good evening, good evening,
good evening, good evening,
and welcome to QI,
where tonight we're doing the maths
and making the money.
Let's meet our mathematical
masterminds.
The irrational Aisling Bea.
The recurring Susan Calman.
A prime example, Sandi Toksvig.
And the square root of f-all,
Alan Davies.
So, let's get their numbers.
Susan goes:
♪ One, two, three, four... ♪
Aisling goes:
♪ Two, four, six, eight... ♪
Sandi goes:
# Five-seven-oh-five! #
And Alan goes:
CHILD: 'Two twos are six!
'Two threes are seven.
Two fours are 24.'
Well done.
It's getting worse, you know.
Now, before we start, we've already
done a little market research
to see if many heads are
better than one.
We've asked a random selection
of our studio audience to guess
how many sweets are in this jar,
and we want each member of the panel
to do the same, right?
So you can write down your thoughts.
I'll come back to you
at the end of the show
and ask you for your best guesses.
The winner will get to call
themselves Smarty- Pants.
Can I just check that they
are actually sweets first of all?
Oh, yes, they really are individual
chocolate beans.
I've done it already. Wow! Done.
You can put it away
till the end of the show.
Now, what was this man very good
at doing with his fingers?
This man being the man
sitting down with the crown.
He kind of looks like he's
doing the Macarena,
but I don't think
they used to do that.
Is it a card trick? Is it a "nothing
up my sleeves", is it one of those?
It looks like that.
AISLING: Is the man in the middle
Jesus?
I know that face from somewhere.
We're in the Old Testament.
Oh, are we? Well...
The man in the middle is Daniel.
He was in a lion's den,
if you remember.
He was in prison
and he was released from prison
because he had the ability to
interpret...?
Dreams. Dreams. Dreams.
And the King whose dreams
he interpreted was?
Happy.
Asleep. N, N, N...
Nestafarius.
Nebuchadnezzar.
Nebuchadnezzar.
Oh, I was close.
Yes, yes.
Nebuchadnezzar, who was king of?
All things around him.
Babylon. He was.
Yes. And the Babylonians were
very good
at doing what with their fingers?
Gardening.
The Hanging Gardens of Babylon.
What's the theme... Yes, no, you're
right. What's... Green-fingered.
Babylon is... What's the theme
of our show tonight?
Babylon is where...
Adding up, adding up.
Maths. Yeah. Maths.
Babylonians, I won't say
they invented mathematics, exactly,
but they had a counting
system on their fingers which was
different from ours.
How's our counting system work?
One, two, three, four, five...
One, two, three, four, five, six,
seven, eight, nine, ten. Phew!
And therefore, because of that...
Decimal, decimal. We have
a decimal system, based on ten.
But they have a different system,
they counted on their fingers
differently.
- Oh, they did the...
- One, two, three...
They went one, two, three, four...
They went the JOI NTS of the fingers.
Yeah, the joints. Yes. One, two,
three. Four, five, six. Seven,
eight, nine, Ten, 11, 12.
And then they'd put their thumb up.
13, 14, 15.
16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21,
22, 23, 24.
Put their finger up.
And so on, until they got to 60,
which is five iterations of 12.
After that you'd need
another person.
Yes, exactly. Just as we would need
another person after ten.
That's the point. And they had
a very successful system.
Why is that important
and influential?
Well, it's the hours of the day,
is it?
Hours of the day,
60 minutes in an hour.
60 seconds in a minute.
But the 24 divides into more than
any other number,
divides by two, three, four, six,
eight...
Oh, Alan, you're on fire!
..and 12.
Yeah! Absolutely right.
Good boy!
We also have 360...
Degrees.
..degrees in a full circle.
12 inches to a foot.
12 is so much more pleasing,
I think. It is.
Well, it's factorisable,
and therefore it's
a much more natural way.
It seems like it was some chap
with more time on his hands.
Ten is easy - you look and think,
"There's ten," straight away.
He's thinking, "But we could be more
creative," and he's working out...
Isn't he? He's got more time.
But they didn't have the internet.
They were just
looking at their hands, going,
"I wish I had a Game Boy.
May as well count my knuckles."
I've got a question.
Yeah?
When you want to say to someone,
just one, I just want one.
You know, across a room.
Yeah.
Get me two, get me two.
How do you do that?
Do you have to go like that?
If you go like that it means three,
you get three of everything.
It's a very interesting question.
I'm only going to tell you this
three more times.
If you were Roman,
that would be five, wouldn't it?
It's very confusing.
Yeah, the Romans, that's five. Yeah.
There you are, that's it.
Now, last night,
I tossed two heads at the same time.
What are the chances? What?
I don't understand, what are you
doing? No, no, what? No, no.
Yeah, no, it's fine. No, no,
I misunderstood, I misunderstood.
It's completely fine.
Two coins at the same time?
Yeah, a coin here, a coin there.
I just want to know what
the odds are.
Because I'm tempted to say
one in three, but I bet it's not.
Well, what...
SUSAN: It's seven in 94.
No, you've got two coins, right.
Yeah.
There are four possible outcomes.
There's heads-heads.
Heads-tails.
Yeah.
Tails-tails.
And tails-heads.
Tails-heads.
Tails-heads. Yeah.
Yeah. So it's one in four.
One in four. One in four.
It's one in four.
Does it have anything to do with
whether you normally toss
with your right hand
or toss with your left hand?
That's assuming it's an equal toss.
The thing is, it's not that difficult
a thing to understand mathematically,
but this was given to Members of
Parliament as a question in 2012.
60% of MPs got it wrong.
Did that include
the Chancellor of the Exchequer?
Well, there was
a split on party lines.
47% of the Tories got it wrong.
And 77% of Labour MPs got it wrong.
Now, listen, can I...? I should have
said this at the beginning,
I have to be very honest,
I am phobic about maths.
No, I understand.
I was like you, I was also...
My father's a mathematician,
a physicist,
and I was phobic about maths.
Yeah. I always said, "Oh, no, I'm
allergic to maths, I can't do it."
But, actually, it's very beautiful,
isn't it, it's really...
Oh, now I love it.
I wish one could be turned on to it.
Yeah. I'm going to get
turned on tonight to maths.
All right.
My thinking, Stephen, is if it's a
head and a tail, that's one outcome.
Yeah. And then a tail and a tail
and a head and a head.
I'm not counting which coin
does a thing.
I'm still sticking with three.
Ah, then you think it's
one in three.
And you're still wrong.
But I'd give them a break, though,
because if I was
in parliament and I was like,
"Listen, I know you said you're
going to fix the housing system
"and you're going to
sort my benefits,
"but the big question is -
I've got two coins.
"I've got really good hands,
I can flip them at the same time.
"What's the probability
of each hand?"
Like, if he could pull that out
and go, "You're a witch!"
and then... You wouldn't trust them.
Do you know the story
of the professor of mathematics
at the University of Warwick,
Jeffrey Hamilton,
giving a lecture
in the 1970s on this topic?
He was talking about probabilities
and about it either coming down
heads or coming down tails
and how you could calculate that
it was going to be either one
or the other,
and he tossed the coin in the air
and it fell from his hand and it
rolled across the lecture theatre
and ended up exactly on its edge.
So I like the fact there is a chance
element in all these things.
Always, absolutely. Yeah.
And of course, ordinary people
who are not MPs are just as fallible.
In fact, 74% got it wrong - only 3%
more stupid than the Labour MPs.
At least then they're representing
the common man. Yeah.
There was a third-pound burger, the
A&E company, the rival to McDonalds.
People preferred it to the McDonalds
version, but it failed.
When people were asked why
they didn't buy it, they said,
well, it was a con.
Oh, they thought it was less
than a quarter pound?
They thought you got less meat.
AMERICAN ACCENT: It's only a third,
it's not a quarter!
And three is a smaller
number than four,
therefore a third of a pound must
be less than a quarter of a pound.
Oh, my God. And this is the most
powerful nation on Earth.
This is also the nation where nine
out of ten high school graduates
think that Joan of Arc
is Noah's wife, so... Yes.
But on the subject of probability,
I've got this.
It's really interesting,
it's a probability issue.
You want a pack of cards each.
I can't catch.
Oh, well caught. Well held.
We've got some for you. All right.
I want you to take the cards out
and give them a good shuffle,
good shuffle.
I'm going to do the same.
I've just shuffled them.
Beautifully done.
Sandi's, Sandi's, Sandi's...
Look at her, she's like a croupier.
Jesus!
Yeah. Very good.
Oh, no.
Very good.
Yes, I've shuffled,
I've riffle shuffled. Yeah.
I'm not a gambler. OK. OK,
so can you shove your cards in here?
Oh, all right, then.
All right. Thank you.
I'll give it a good shake.
Is this going to be one of those
Derren Brown ones where we
all can't eat for a week,
or something like that?
No, nothing like that.
There you are. There you go.
All right. It's just about
probability, it's not a big deal.
Is there anything you can't
turn your hand to, Stephen?
Now it's magic.
You haven't seen me
turn my hand to anything yet.
And I'll put my cards in, as well.
There we go. All right.
And give it all a good shake.
All right, so you take one card out.
Don't look, and if you can put it
close to your chest,
but not, no, no, don't look.
I've looked, I know what it is.
Well, it doesn't matter. All right.
The point is to shove it
close to your chest so that that's
where you're going to...
That's not your chest, darling.
The reason to shove it close
to your chest is so that
when you reveal it,
it's camera height.
Oh, right. That's all it is.
All right. So take one out, feel it,
yeah, random. All right.
Magic. Yeah, very good, very good.
All right. I'll do the same.
All right. All right.
I'll do the same. OK, so the point
is it's about probability.
The first card you choose,
it could be anything.
The second card, the probability
it's going to be the same card
is quite small.
And it's even less likely that
three cards will be the same,
and so on and so on.
The chances that you'd get all
the cards the same
is about one in two billion.
Now there is a possibility,
but a very unlikely possibility, that
two of the cards will be the same.
OK. So Sandi, you'll reveal
your card.
Yours is the six of clubs,
all right. Me?
OK, and you reveal yours.
Oh, my God!
Oh!
Now Alan. Oh! You reveal yours.
Oh, no, surely not.
No, oh, my God! And mine as well!
Oh, there you go!
Funny, how can that happen?
There it is.
Burn him! He's a witch.
Yeah. There you are. OK.
He's a witch.
That's a very good trick.
Thank you very much. That's very
good. That's terribly good.
All right, there we are.
Fantastic, honestly.
That was really good.
Oh, you're sweet, thank you.
It was like Paul Daniels
was in the room.
If only he was in the bag.
So the chances were about one in
two billion that you'd get all
the cards the same
and it just happened this evening.
I'm amazed. So, tell me now,
do animals count?
Do you mean in life,
in a sort of sociological...?
They count very much, in that sense.
They count.
But do they count in the sense
of actually...?
From what I know, there are
some animals that can count.
Yes, you're right.
They all lined up for Noah.
I'm just saying. Yeah.
Yeah, and that's a fact story,
a true fact story.
That's a fact story, so...
Yeah. You don't hear them fighting.
Have you any thoughts on this
side of the room?
Well, I can imagine
a monkey can count.
Surely.
There must be a rhesus monkey with
an accountancy degree,
there must be. Yeah.
But you're spot on. Not only
monkeys, but monkeys certainly are.
Apparently chicks when they hatch
can show some propensity towards
being able to count.
One, two, three, four, five, chicks.
Because you can see their heads
counting, can't you, they're like
one, two, three, four.
Well, let me give you a list of some
of the animals that have been
spotted counting.
Pigeons, parrots, raccoons, ferrets,
rats, salamanders, honeybees,
monkeys and apes
have all been seen to count,
add and subtract.
Rhesus monkeys -
funny you should mention them -
at Columbia University have shown
they can arrange up to nine objects
in the correct numerical sequence.
It's always rhesus monkeys.
Do you not feel sorry for them?
They're always saying, oh, let's
teach them to speak French, or...
Yeah, you're right.
Crows and parrots can count up
to five or six.
Cormorants can count up to seven.
Now how do you know that?
They take seven fish
back to the nest.
Not quite that.
Something like that.
Actually, Chinese fishermen have
trained them to catch fish for them.
And what they do is
they put a ring round their throat,
so that they can't swallow
fish themselves.
So they catch the fish, but dump
them on the deck of the boat.
And how they've trained them is
that once they get past seven, on
the eighth they get rid of the ring
and the cormorant can catch its own.
I love that,
when they make up their own mind.
There used to be a bear at
Regent's Park Zoo in the 1920s
that was fed biscuits by
the general public.
And on Mondays it was half price
and so they got a lot more biscuits.
And so on Tuesdays the bear used
to take day the off.
Yes, that's it.
He counted days, or she
counted days - ursine calendar.
It's brilliant.
But I suppose it's when in need,
like you wouldn't be needing
to count up stuff if you're a bear,
like, you're not...
But sometimes you'll see,
maybe they need to count how many
kids they have.
Yes, yeah.
And they can tell if one of them
has gone missing.
Although ducks are rubbish
at that, they are. I live on
a house boat for many, many years,
and we're forever trying to get
baby ducks to join back up
with Mother, who'd just gone off.
She was off down to Battersea.
Sandi, loads of your stories of what
you do for entertainment are like,
we used to try and convince ducks
to hang out with each other...
I suffer from a fatal condition,
Aisling,
which is posh voice, no money.
That sounds absolutely awful,
I would hate to have that.
What's funny about this, though,
is that birds have got tiny,
tiny brains. Really, you would
expect nothing of a bird. Mmm.
And yet some of the primates have
got quite big brains.
You'd think they'd be more
than counting and yet
they don't seem to be doing more
than count to five, like the birds.
I don't think it's anything
to do with the brain
because I remember
being in the desert in Africa
and there were ants I was shown who
apparently work out their shadow
and the angle of the sun in order to
get their path back home.
Now, really, that's
kind of trigonometry, isn't it?
And you wouldn't think
an ant would be doing it.
But they actually use their own
shadow to work out...
to calculate their route.
Yes, and there are mosquito fish,
which is a kind of carp,
and they are able to count, it seems.
If they are harassed by a male
they take refuge in a shoal
of other mosquito fish.
They can count on their female...
Yeah, but they detect the difference
between just one or two or
two or three or three
or four. They can't tell
the difference between four or five,
so, you know, it's basically
a small amount they can tell
and they hide in the largest number.
It may be because the male
mosquito fish has the largest penis
of any fish relative to its body.
Oh, God.
It's 70% of its length.
And it's barbed.
I don't think it's possible
to come on this programme
and not discuss the penis.
No, it isn't. Not while I've got
a breath in my body, Sandi!
Now, why don't bankers give a damn
what people think of them?
Because they're psychopaths
and they lack empathy.
Something like one in ten people who
work on Wall Street have
psychopathic tendencies. Apparently.
Yes, it's true, yes.
But that leaves 90% perfectly fine,
doesn't it? Yeah.
It must be because in their world
it all seems fine, what they do.
That's probably true. But there's
a funny thing about money.
Are you aware of that
Hollywood phrase?
I think it was William Goldman -
"follow the money".
You follow the money
when you watch a movie.
So if you see a movie
and someone, you know,
has a suitcase of money, everyone...
You can register it,
watch their eyes move -
people watch the money.
You can't help it, it's very human.
You know, the first time you get
a load of cash in your hand,
which occasionally I have,
it's just... That's the point.
You know that scene in...
What's the one where Demi Moore
rolls around the bed on the money?
Indecent Proposal. And she puts...
I've done that...
Which William Goldman was...
..with 40 quid. But it does feel...
If you get a... In change.
And that's the point of our...
That's the point of our question.
The physical proximity to money
changes the way you feel.
It seems that you can prove that
being close to money makes you
care less about what
people think of you.
That must be quite a new thing,
cos money's quite new.
There used to be like... You used
to, when you had a good night,
come home and throw chickens
on yourself
because that was how you...
But now it's cash.
But let me take you through
the experiment.
Test subjects were asked who
they wanted to work with.
They were told randomly either that
everyone else wanted to work
with them or they were told
that nobody did.
So half the subjects felt rejected
by their peers, half felt reinforced.
Now, some of the subjects had been
previously exposed to money
and they were just told it was
a test for manual dexterity -
could you count out this
money very fast?
And the other half were asked
the same question,
but it was bits of blank paper.
The ones who had handled the money
were not offended
when told that nobody wanted
to work with them.
The ones that had handled
the paper were offended.
I've got a Scottish fiver.
Coming here, trying to buy England!
It's a status thing, maybe it makes
you feel more important. Exactly.
I think it can make you feel safer.
Even if it isn't yours, yeah.
Because you can buy your way
out of any trouble, as we all know.
It's just, you just buy your
way out, as I... Yep.
So it makes you feel, erm,
safer, I think, perhaps. Yeah.
It's weird, isn't it?
And they also used money to test
people feigning blindness.
If someone says, "I'm blind,"
they go, "All right,
let's test your blindness."
"Can't see anything."
"Read this." "Can't see it."
Then you wave a £50 note in front
of them, they go, "Oh, wow."
A £5 doesn't work,
but a £50 note is almost impossible
for you not to look at it.
This is clearly a test not done by
the NHS, who don't have a £50 note.
Well, there was an ophthalmic
optician who didn't, so instead
he put a Post-it Note on his
forehead saying "go fuck yourself".
And similarly,
people couldn't help looking at it.
Now, what illegal substance can be
found in the pockets
of most of our audience?
How did it get there? Cocaine.
Cos it's on banknotes.
Is the right answer. Yes!
Yes, absolutely.
Most of our audience...
Most of our audience have residue
of cocaine in their...
I can see everyone shuffling
around...
They're licking their money.
More than 99% of banknotes in
circulation have detectable cocaine.
What?! Yes.
It's why drug dogs sometimes have
difficulty in identifying.
Cos I get the sleeper train home
and there's always a drug dog there.
Not for me, it's just a...
It's because it's a good way
of smuggling drugs up to...
up north, the sleeper train.
You don't want to go on the train.
You want to get an actual mule.
Nobody is going to expect somebody
to have drugs on a mule
because it's too obvious, isn't it?
I'd love somebody arriving
into Glasgow on a mule.
On a mule. Nothing to see.
AISLING: All right, lads?
Can you clean it off? I mean,
I don't want it. Not really, no.
Paper. Put a hairdryer over it and
you can blow the dust off, maybe.
That won't do it.
There used to be a hotel, Stephen,
in New York, where the concierge
was famous for washing the coins.
If you didn't like the coins
in your pocket, I believe
he would put them in a jar
and wash them for you.
I can't think which one it was.
Are there hotels where
they don't do that?
I don't know, I have no money,
I have no idea.
Now, let's leave the filthy moolah.
What do moon-starers do,
and why might
they call themselves that?
Well, the clue would appear
to be in the question.
Yeah.
It's too obvious, I'd say
they watch bare arses all the time.
Yeah. Well, moon-starers is
an anagram of astronomers.
Yay! Points to you. Good work.
Good work!
That was damn fast.
It's not an anagram,
it's an aptagram. Sorry.
Oh! You're right, yeah.
I'll never win,
Sandi Toksvig, never!
What's an aptagram, Sandi?
An aptagram is
an anagram that, where the word
means roughly the same.
Like Apple Macintosh
and laptop machines.
Yeah. Semolina - is no meal.
Yeah.
Yes, moon-starer is
an anagram of astronomer.
In what time in history was that
a relevant thing,
the idea of anagrams
and astronomers?
Well, it must have been
around the time of Galileo, surely.
It was indeed,
the early 17th century.
But he wouldn't have spoken English,
so why would he have
changed his name to moon-starer?
Yeah, this is an example
of an anagram. He...
Oh!
He didn't use English anagrams,
he used...?
Gree...Latin.
Latin, very good. There he is.
Why would they have used ars magna,
great art, in that?
Oh, and that's moon is the ars.
And ars magna is?
And then magna is...
Is an anagram of anagrams.
ALL: Oh.
So, yes. But anyway, why...
Well, because the Church took
a dim view of...
Not because of the Church,
although the Church did take a dim
view of what he did.
I like his very casual
approach to the telescope.
He's just sort of... Yeah.
Now I'm going to have a cigarette
and now I'm going to look again.
Was it just to make the whole
thing more fun?
If only it was that.
In fact, even in his day,
there was scientific rivalry.
So if you discovered something
and you wanted to tell a friend
about it and you didn't want
anyone else to intercept the news,
you gave it in anagram form.
Oh, it's like codes at school.
Yes, it is. Exactly that, yeah.
Do you think they ever used to,
like, rub around the telescope with
ink and then run away
and then he'll go, "Oh, what's that?
"Oh, no, my eye!
Oh, that's trickery."
Who was his great rival and friend?
Is it an anagram?
I'm going to say Copernicus.
No, no, it wasn't Copernicus.
It was Kepler.
And he sent him an anagram
because he had discovered
the rings of Saturn in 1610.
No, not Saturn, that's Uranus!
Oh, yeah. Sorry, I'm
laughing at the wrong one.
It's not the right planet,
but it's still funny.
I knew one of them was funny.
And he sent Kepler this.
Oh, my! Ah, "smaismrm..."
Oh. Yeah. Yes.
"Nugttauriras..." Great.
Stick that where the sun
don't shine.
It's pretty obvious what he's
putting there. Yeah.
That's... I feel embarrassed asking
you to say what it is.
I feel bad.
It's more important that
the audience work it out.
Yeah, you're right. I don't want
to spoil the joy for them all.
You're right.
It's a Latin phrase,
it actually is an anagram...
I have discovered
the rings of Saturn.
Yes, it is that. Altissimum planetam
tergeminum observavi.
OK. "I have observed the highest
planet to be triplets."
Seen it. I know. Does he mean he's
seen the moons of it, or something?
What does he mean by triplets?
He thought they were moons, but in
fact we now know them to be rings.
That must have been so exciting.
Do you not think?
It must have been so thrilling,
just that one moment
when that suddenly has happened
and nobody else has seen it.
I think it's quite clever, but
they worked out they're planets
because they were moving across
the sky and the stars weren't.
I think it was just the first
thing that made them
think something was afoot.
Oh, I know, and that's what...
That one's moved.
Why has that star moved?
It's not a star, it's Jupiter. Yeah.
And planet is from the Greek for
wanderer, it means a wanderer. Oh.
They do this thing, I don't know
if they're still doing it,
but they did it for a long time,
once a month in Reykjavik,
the government would turn out
all the street lighting
and there would be a lecture
on the public radio about the stars.
And people would go outside.
Oh, brilliant.
And they got rid of all
the ambient light and you could look
up and listen to the lecture
about what you were looking at.
Do you not think that would be a
wonderful thing? That is brilliant.
Yeah. Yeah, I love that.
But in terms of anagrams,
this isn't an anagram, it's actually
a limerick composed by someone,
which I invite you to recite to me.
See if you can.
Uh?
Yes. That's a shock, isn't it?
Yes. And you can do it.
Can you? Yes. Yep.
Yes, you can, it is a limerick.
OK. OK. Right.
You have to ask yourself what these
number are, in fact.
They have some other...
A dozen and 12 dozen.
Ah! Yeah, 12,
but 144 is also called a...?
A gross.
So a dozen, a gross, a score,
plus three times the square
root of four...
..divided by seven.
You're all right, you're doing well.
Plus five.
Well, calm down.
I might have to slap you.
Yes!
Are you all right?
The episode of QI where
Stephen just slaps me.
It's not enough to be a limerick,
it has to be true.
What's nine squared?
81. Yeah.
And as you know,
x the square root of four ÷ 7
+ 5 x 11 is 81.
No, 81. So, say it again now
as a limerick. You can do it now.
Yes, yes. Go on.
Go on, then, Susan. Argh!
A dozen... A dozen...
A dozen, a gross and a score
Plus three times
the square root of four
Divided by seven
Plus five times eleven
Equals nine squared plus
not a bit more.
There you are, well done!
It was a guy called Leigh Mercer who
came up with that. It's rather good.
12 + 1 = 11 + 2. It does.
Yeah, but in what other ways
does 12 + 1 = 11 + 2?
Oh, is it an anagram, then?
They're anagrams of each other.
"Twelve plus one" written out
is an anagram of "eleven plus two".
Wow, you really have had too much
time on your hands.
These were worked out
by Nelson Mandela on Robben Island.
I think they're rather fabulous,
so there. They're marvellous.
All right, OK.
Now, what's the biggest mistake
anyone's ever made with a pencil?
Hmm.
Oh, I say.
Oh, no, it's got to be
a miscalculation or something.
Well, ah, you'd... "Ah, aah..."
"Yeah. Aah..."
MORE IMPRESSION: "Aah, aah,
now, now..."
Lead poisoning? Sucking on the lead?
"Steady."
It's not a, it's not
a historical miscalculation?
No, it's astonishing.
It took place in New York...
..in the '90s, I think it was.
I'll tell you exactly...
All right, Stephen?
Was that a pencil there?
Yeah. Just testing...
Were you miscalculating with
a pencil there, sir?
I eased it in.
I eased it in and it was all fine.
Chapter four,
I eased it in and it was all fine.
In 1998, there was a problem
with pencils.
"Problem with pencils."
"Problem with pencils."
"A pencil problem," basically, yeah.
There's no reason for you
to guess what it was.
I went to the Pencil Museum
in Keswick. What a museum that is!
Ah. No, it's seriously...
They've got a hall of fame of famous
people that have visited.
Phill Jupitus is on it. I've been
there. It is a very good museum.
It's a fabulous place.
Ah, fabulous. It's not that.
It was pencils given to children.
Ah, drugs. Was it the one...?
Time for drugs!
I know what it was,
they printed, for children,
pencils that said
"do not use drugs" on them,
and when they sharpened them,
eventually it said "use drugs."
Oh, you've dropped one. Ah.
You're right.
Very good, very good.
Here they are.
That's "hil-ah-rious".
They say here,
"Too cool to do drugs."
You shave it and it goes,
"cool to do drugs."
"Cool to do drugs."
And then you shave it again
and it goes, "do drugs."
Yes! Do drugs.
There you are.
It was a bit of a mistake,
but well done, Sandi. So,
other mistakes include, in 1945,
the Arkansas legislature accidentally
repealed all their laws at once.
With a pencil?
No, they had an act with the words -
"All laws and parts of laws,
"and particularly Act 33 of the Acts
of 1941, are hereby repealed."
They just meant the particular one,
but it legally meant all their laws.
And then in 2003, the German agency
responsible for TV licences
sent a series of reminders to
St Walpurga, to pay her licence fee.
She died in 777.
Never having paid for her licence!
No. It didn't stop them asking.
And then in the
Australian Morning Bulletin,
which of course is called
The Bully,
they said there was an error
printed in a story titled Pigs
Float Down The Dawson, on page
11 of yesterday's Bully. The story,
by reporter Daniel Burdon, said
that "more than 30,000 pigs were
floating down the Dawson River."
Actually, what the owner
of the piggery said was,
that "30 sows and pigs".
"We'd like to
apologise for the error."
Rather tragically, a group
of volunteers in 1992 in France,
who had volunteered to get
rid of graffiti in the caves.
And they had a great big scrub away
at a cave and... Oh...
Oh, no, not ancient cave paintings!
..got rid of a 15,000-year-old
bison painting. Oh, no!
Exactly!
You'd be really kicking yourself
after that. Yeah. Oops! Yeah.
I was telling you about the law
in Ireland recently.
There were two within the one week.
The first one was where drugs were
legal for 48 hours. Oh, yes.
And people, like, just went nuts.
Well, they didn't go nuts.
The said, "We're going to go nuts,
but we won't really,
"just in case we get in trouble."
And then the other one was
the translation of the Marriage Act
in English, the translation
in Gaelic... Mmm.
..technically,
because of the way it was worded,
forbid marriage between
a man and a woman.
It said "marriage
is between men or women,
"but it's not between
men and women."
So it technically made
all marriage illegal.
They had to twist that one as well.
So, now,
why did a failure to sell mirrors
massively improve modern media?
Because you can't put
a mirror on a selfie stick.
Is that it?
Well, selfies, oddly enough,
are rather close to it.
A medieval version
of selfies, at least. Medieval?
We're going back to
the mid-15th century.
People used to go on...?
Pilgrimages.
Pilgrimages.
And a pilgrimage was a visit to a
holy place, where there would be...
Sandwiches.
There would be sandwiches,
but what were you going to see?
Some kind of shrine or something.
Shrine, a shrine, relics.
Shrine. Oh, relics. Relics.
I love a good relic.
Bones, material,
bits of beard, bits of body,
bits of the true cross,
bits of all kinds of stuff.
Porn. Yeah. And they were
so popular that you might go there
and you couldn't even get
close to it.
So you'd hold up a selfie stick,
as it were.
It wouldn't be a selfie stick.
It would be a box with a lid
and the lid was a mirror.
And the mirror would see the relic.
And the beams and the rays
would hit the mirror
and go down into the box and you'd
close the box and you'd go home
and it contained the images, in your
head at least, of the holy relics.
Did it, really? Seriously,
one of the best pieces
of medieval marketing I've ever
heard. Yeah.
Yes. And this particular man
was making mirrors.
And he made these mirrors
for Aachen,
and Aachen had Mary's robe
from the night Jesus was born.
It had Jesus' swaddling clothes.
It had the cloth in which John
the Baptist's head was wrapped,
after he was decapitated.
The loincloth Jesus
wore on the cross.
So this person we're talking
about made mirrors for pilgrims to
go to Aachen, but unfortunately
he didn't sell any.
So he went back to
his home town of Mainz,
and in 1450 he produced something
that changed the world for ever.
A print, a stamp, a print version,
Stephen, of what they'd see in...
Print...
And it was stamped. Postcards.
No, Sandi,
that's kind of my idea. No.
- Souvenir mugs.
- No.
He created printing.
He created the printed word.
MAN IN AUDIENCE: Johan Gutenberg.
Thank you, audience.
He's Johannes Gutenberg. In 1450,
he created the Gutenberg Bible,
and then other books he created.
Oh, yes.
It changed the world totally.
But unfortunately,
the mistake was he went to basically
a kind of Dragons' Den,
who funded him.
He took a wine press,
he converted the wine press into
a letter press, to create books.
And then he had a Duncan Bannatyne
character, "I'm out. Out."
But his investors...
"Don't like it, never take off,
I liked your mirrors better.
"No. I'm out." Well, they,
unfortunately they took all
the money, the investors,
the dragons took all the money.
He died destitute in 1468. Very sad.
The most influential figure
of his age, in those terms.
One of the first printers in
Britain was called Wynkyn de Worde.
Yes, he was. Don't you think
that's so delightful?
There's a society, a Wynkyn society.
Wynkyn society, yeah.
And then, of course,
Caxton was the other great one.
But, yeah.
Before he invented
the printing press,
Gutenberg was a failed mirror-maker.
And so we enter the mad world
of mangled misconceptions that we
call General Ignorance.
And, given the show's theme,
we've even spent a bit of money
on a mathematical machine.
Ooh!
Yeah, you'll be impressed with that.
Ooh.
It looks like a happy face
that's taken a lot of drugs.
It does a bit, doesn't it? Yeah.
It's lovely.
But what is it, Stephen?
Well, I just want to know who first
proved the theorem
that this model demonstrates.
Pythagoras. Pythagoras.
Oh!
My grandfather,
who was from Hungary,
always pronounced it "Peeta-goras."
"So that at school doing
the mathematics,
"are you studying Peeta-goras?"
And I thought this man,
Peter Goras, who was Peter?
No, it wasn't
Peter Goras who first proved it.
Oh. What is it, the theorem
that needs to be discussed here?
A squared equals B squared
plus C squared.
Yeah, yeah, it's... The sum
of the two, the squared
of two smaller sides.
The sum on the two squares
is equal to the sum on the
hypotenuse, exactly.
Yeah, that big one should
go into the other two.
So you can see here, the yellow,
that's the triangle.
These are its two sides.
And these are the squares
of the two sides,
they are literally geometrically
expressed as squares,
rather than just mathematically,
as if that was, say, X,
it's just not X squared, but it is
literally the square, there.
And there's Y squared.
And it's supposedly equal to
Z squared, which is
the longest side, the hypotenuse.
Because here's the right angle,
here.
These are not right angles,
obviously.
And there's that.
How can we show they're equal?
Well, there are all kinds of ways,
but here's one way.
Drumroll, please.
Oh, yes.
All right, let's go.
Ooh.
Oh, that's very clever.
There it goes,
pouring into the first square.
Wow! Expensive.
Is it going to fill it up?
Wow. Shut the front door!
Oh, Well, it definitely
equals X squared. Yes.
Does it equal Y squared as well?
I need to go to the toilet.
There's Y squared,
it's filling up, it's filling up,
it's filling up, it's full.
And there it is.
Hurray!
Isn't that satisfactory?
Highly satisfactory.
It's the first theorem
most people learn at school.
It's Pythagoras's theorem by name,
but it wasn't, it was used many,
many years before him - people used
it to build buildings and Euclid
demonstrated it before him.
But we give it
the name of Pythagoras.
Who is Euclid, then?
He was even before?
He's the father of mathematics.
Euclid?
Oh, was he? Yeah. Yeah.
Oh, Euclid, yes.
Before him, nothing.
The greatest. Yeah,
well done to Euclid, we love Euclid.
So, let's take this model away.
Let's hear it for him.
Now, by the end of Elizabeth I's
reign, there was
a really extraordinary
number of English dukes.
Five points for every one
you can name.
OK. Norfolk.
Cambridge. Cambridge?
Erm, Hazzard. Dukes Of Hazzard.
Hazzard?
Is it some devilish trick
and there aren't any at all?
I said it was an
extraordinary number.
The extraordinary number is none,
exactly. Ah! Well done.
No dukes.
Can't believe I fell for that one.
By the end of her reign, there were
certainly no royal dukes
because royal dukes are the issue of
the monarch, essentially, and there
weren't any because Queen Elizabeth
was a virgin queen and didn't marry.
And there were also no other dukes.
Are dukes always
the children of the queen or king?
Royal dukes are,
but other dukes aren't.
We have dukes of Marlborough,
dukes of Buccleuch and so on.
And they were always into music
and that's where you get
the duke box, which is...?
I think you've understood it 100%.
Yep.
There weren't very many peers
by the time Queen Elizabeth died.
There was one marquess,
18 earls and 37...
Wigan Pier.
That hadn't been built yet,
so even that didn't exist.
I know, it was a shocking thing,
but, yeah.
The best peerage joke connected
to Queen Elizabeth I
was told by John Aubrey,
whose diaries are fantastic.
This involves the Earl of Oxford,
who some people think wrote
the plays of Shakespeare.
He didn't.
He wrote this - "this Earl of Oxford,
making his low obeisance to
"Queen Elizabeth, happened to let
a fart, at which he was
"so abashed and ashamed that he went
to travel seven years.
"On his return,
the queen welcomed him home and said,
"'My Lord, I had forgot the fart."'
Well, there you are. Yeah, good.
In the early 17th century, there
were no dukes in England at all.
And that is very nearly all we
have time for. However, we still
have to see if the QI audience has
solved the sweet-jar challenge.
Because what we wanted to do was
to take their average.
The idea is that we would
arrive at the wisdom of crowds.
It was a man called Francis Galton
who first came up with that phrase.
He went to a fair where there
was weighing the pig
and no-one individually got it right,
but he noticed that
if you added up all the guesses
and divided them to get the average
it was exactly on the weight. Wow.
We're hoping we'll get that here.
So, reveal yourselves.
What have you come up with?
I've put 1,000 underneath,
though, cos I realised I'd really
miscalculated when I saw Sandi's.
Right. So 1,000 is my answer.
1,966. 12. Yeah, just in case.
Just in case what?
Just in case what
I see isn't what it appears to be.
Or...
Ah, clever!
Clever, clever, clever.
OK, so, the average of
the audience's guess is 2,412.
The actual number of Smarties
in that jar is 3,890.
So, the audience are the closest.
Congratulations.
And that concerns
the wisdom of crowds.
So, the time has come to tally up
the scores.
Oh, my actual, oh, my actual.
So, in first place,
with a magnificent two points,
it's Aisling Bea!
Oh!
And with an earth-shattering zero,
it's Sandi Toksvig.
A more than respectable minus six,
Susan Calman.
And on his terms, really quite
handsome, minus 43,
Alan Davies.
So, it's goodnight from
Susan, Sandi, Aisling, Alan and me.
And I'll leave you with this dark
observation from Joseph Stalin.
My favourite dictator.
"The people
who cast the votes decide nothing.
"The people who count the votes
decide everything." Goodnight.