Simon Singh
speaker
239 appearances
3 recordings
1 series
first heard Dec 2013
last heard Jan 2015
Simon Singh’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsNo recordings in the last 12 months.Older appearances are listed below; set an alert to hear about the next one.
Appearances
99, exactly.
So multiplying, we can all do very easily.
But factoring, going backwards, undoing the padlock... To say, right, you've got 99.
Yeah, but if I think of two numbers and I can multiply them fairly quickly in my head...
323.
Now, what two numbers do you multiply to get 323?
Now, not one times 323 and not something with a fraction in it.
That's kind of a really hard question.
What two numbers do you multiply to get 323?
Now...
There are lots and lots of listeners, and one or two of them might have figured it out by now, but most people will be scratching their heads.
And the answer is, it's 19 times 17.
Now, I can do that really easy.
19 times 17, well, 20 times 17 is 340.
Take away 17 is 323.
The multiplication's trivial.
Especially for a computer.
And especially for small numbers, yeah.
And so when I take big numbers, computers can still do it very, very quickly, but even computers cannot factor.
That's why if you look at your calculator, you've got a nice big multiplication sign, but you don't have any factoring button because computers and calculators cannot factor.
Showing 81–100 of 239 · page 5 of 12
← Previous
Next →