Odds and Evenings

33 episodes listed below

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Two hosts, three problems, and the working shown.

The gist

On Odds and Evenings, hosts Alex and Alaric trade maths problems and reason through them aloud, wrong turns included. Subjects run from the structure of an Only Connect wall and Shamir's secret sharing to a helium balloon in an accelerating car and the search for better guitar tunings.

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About Odds and Evenings

Odds and Evenings is a maths podcast built around two hosts, Alex and Alaric, swapping problems and solving them out loud. The usual rhythm is around three items per episode, with one host posing a problem and the other working, then the roles reversing. The numbered episodes carry three-part alliterative titles, as in 'Quiz Shows, Queues and Quavers' or 'Shamir's, Sums and Seatings'. What fills them is unusually varied. A quiz-show wall of sixteen words becomes a counting problem about how its groups can be arranged. Queueing theory arrives through Poisson arrivals, timed passes at Disneyland and the London Underground holding trains to even out the gaps. A question about guitar tunings asks whether a small set of alternatives could cover nearly every song, then notices that violins are tuned at wider intervals than guitars. Physics turns up too, in a helium balloon that drifts forward when a car accelerates. Harder material sits alongside the playful: rational trigonometry with spreads replacing angles, Busy Beaver machines, and Shamir's secret sharing done with polynomials modulo a number. Several puzzles come from outside the pair, including a listener's question about splitting 30 rugby players into groups for a drill. Maths Jam comes up more than once, as the source of a dice game called Gamble Shambles and in a debrief of the Big Maths Jam conference. Wrong turns stay in. On a car-and-passengers problem both hosts arrive with different formulas, and one admits mid-explanation that a line is already wrong. That openness extends to the listener, who is invited to pause and try the problem before the hosts finish. Tangents are part of the texture; talk of large numbers can slide into entropy and the heat death of the universe, prompting the question of how they got there. Some episodes are recorded with both hosts in the same room rather than remotely, including the one with guest Matthew Scroggs, editor of Chalkdust. That episode features Quantum Go Fish, a card game in which a player's hand stays undetermined until questions pin it down, alongside a tennis tournament puzzle about telling amateurs from professionals. Banter fills the gaps: a suspected spider bite, a joking mention of a backup host, and outtakes that run on past the sign-off. The hosts say they aim the maths at someone with a maths or science degree in their past, and school-level resistor rules sitting next to ideas well beyond them bear that out. What a listener gets is the experience of thinking alongside two people who treat an unsolved problem as the point of the exercise.

Made for: Suits a listener who once studied maths or science, still enjoys a good puzzle, and would rather follow the working, false starts included, than hear a tidy solution read out.

What sets it apart: Rather than presenting puzzles already solved, Odds and Evenings captures two hosts reasoning through them in real time, with subjects that run from rational trigonometry and Busy Beavers to Disneyland queues and helium balloons in cars.

In their own words

Playing around with maths and puzzles was something that the two hosts spent their time at university doing together. Now in their late twenties with proper grown up jobs, Alaric and Alex carve out the occasional evening to sit back and smell the numbers. Not all of the mathematics is entry level, but they envisioned this podcast for those people whose science degrees may be long behind them, but who still get a kick out of recreational numbering. If this is your first time listening, episode 4 (http://www.oddsandevenings.com/4) is a good representation of the show as a whole and can be used as a jumping on point.All episodes can be played in browser here (http://www.oddsandevenings.com/epis…

Why you'd press play

Euclid's circles look obvious until Alex and Alaric make you ask whether they intersect.

Press play if you want

to work through a puzzle with Alex and Alaric, wrong turns included
to question why a geometry diagram feels like proof

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

probability and expected valuecombinatorics and counting puzzleslogic puzzlesgeometry and trigonometrycryptography and secret sharingeveryday physicscard and board gameslistener-suggested problems

Talks about

Science

Best episodes of Odds and Evenings

Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.

#32 - Quiz Shows, Queues and QuaversJun 15, 2020

A quiz wall opens into a crisp, human-sized look at queues, connections, and waiting.

Only Connect's 16-word wall gives Odds and Evenings a tidy way into a bigger question: how can a jumble of terms start to show its hidden connections?

#31 - Cards, Competitions and Celebrations (w/ Matthew Scroggs)Nov 9, 2019

A live puzzle episode that turns Go Fish quantum, then tests how much a few tournament matches can really prove.

Odds and Evenings shapes a live episode around mathematical uncertainty, opening with Go Fish before turning it into Quantum Go Fish. Alex, Alaric, and the editor of Chalkdust keep the process collaborative rather than sealed-off: the card game arrives through a listener…

#30 - Delta-Y, Diversity and DynamicsJul 14, 2019

A practical resistor puzzle opens into Fibonacci shortcuts, lookup tables, and matrix powers.

A box of one-ohm resistors gives this episode a tidy practical hook: how to build a chosen resistance from simple parts. Series and parallel rules are treated less as formulas to recite than as tools for design, with the conversation circling toward systematic construction and…

#29 - Pyramids, Pitches and PumpsJun 10, 2019

A warm return that finds a small maths puzzle inside the everyday problem of controlling sound.

Odds and Evenings returns for what the hosts call season two, easing back into maths through a familiar nuisance: how to control sound without spoiling it.

#27 - Strangers, Scaling and ScoresFeb 14, 2019

A lively discussion of scale, the cube-square law, infinite-dimensional appetites, and the unresolved problem of grinding the moon.

Odds and Evenings uses scale as a path into odd, elastic mathematics. Alex and Alaric begin with how strength changes as size changes, then carry the cube-square law into higher dimensions, where a fourth-dimensional being scales as four over three and an infinite-dimensional…

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About Odds and Evenings

In their own words

Why you'd press play

Talks about

Best episodes of Odds and Evenings

Podcasts like Odds and Evenings

Episodes

#32 - Quiz Shows, Queues and Quavers

#31 - Cards, Competitions and Celebrations (w/ Matthew Scroggs)

#30 - Delta-Y, Diversity and Dynamics

Mini Episode: Bidding Game

#29 - Pyramids, Pitches and Pumps

#28 - Rugby, Rolling and Robots

#27 - Strangers, Scaling and Scores

#26 - Geometry, Goblins and Getting to Pubs

#25 - Codes, Coins and Criss-Crosses

#24 - Shamir's, Sums and Seatings

#23 - Ants, Arcs and Awkward Patterns

#22 - Pandemics, Padovan’s and Pumpkins

#21 - Torque, Truth and Time Signatures

#20 - Tangles, Twists and Trots

#19 - Probability, Pubs and Power

#18 - Pads, Plato and Pirates

#17 - Caps, Cracks and Kaprekar's Constants

#16 - Algorithms, Adding and Adders

#15 - Sofas, Secrets and Sizzling String

#14 - Guesses, Geometry and Grover's Algorithm

#13 - Byzantines, Blockchain and Boats

#12 - Ducks, Deals and Doku

#11 - Dwarves, Drinking and Deserts

#10 - Stacks, Splitting and Seating

#9 - Cows, Counting and Chin Ups

#8 - Snakey, Scrabble and Sieve

#7 - Water, Winter and Watson

#6 - Princesses, Ponds and Poker Puzzles

#5 - Factors, Figures and Words With Friends

#4 - Farthings, Fizz and Food Boards

#3 - Rationality, Reddit and Recurrence

#2 - Advent Calendars, Combinatorics and Christmas

#1 - Tetrahedra, Truels and Triangular Children