Stand-up comedy routine about bad science 

5:55 I'm sad that the joke wasn't "... Then the temperature outside of the airplane is -18C / 6 = -3C."

I’m still left with the question of what the authors of the book actually thought they were saying.

Canadian here... I'd agree that -10°C is about the time when it actually starts feeling cold out.

This video is 6 times funnier than a stand-up comedy routine about good science

Steve: "Coldness starts at -10.6 degrees Celsius." Me: "As a Canadian, I agree." Steve: "The authors were Canadian." Me: "Knew it!"

That was SO satisfying. I feel like I have these kind of monologues in my head whenever someone says something they think is science but actually isn't, but whenever I try to point out why it makes no sense, they roll their eyes and say I'm being too literal or missing the point. One additional argument that you came close to but didn't quite articulate, though, is the difference between interval and ratio scales. Both types require that the intervals between consecutive numbers are equal (so 1 unit is a fixed size, no matter where in the scale it occurs), but in ratio scales, there must be an absolute zero, which indicates an absence of the property. So height, for example, is a ratio scale, because 0 feet means no height. But temperature, at least when measured in C or F, is an interval scale, because 0C or 0F do not mean "no heat". It's just an arbitrary point on the scale, and measurements can be taken that are below zero. Kelvin, however, IS a ratio scale, because 0 degrees K DOES mean "no heat." So any time someone uses "x times colder" or "x times hotter", they MUST be assumed to be using the Kelvin scale, otherwise they are simply wrong, because you can't talk about interval scales that way. It was gracious of you to allow that they might be talking about the C or F scale, but let's face it, if they were, they'd still be wrong, even if the numbers added up. -30C is not 3 times colder than -10C because the numbers on the C scale are arbitrary and not a literal measurement of how many units of heat are in the system. I'm sure you know all this already, it just doesn't translate as well into comedy.

I love how when at 7:27 when Steve says, "it's actually a pretty decent approximation to pi," the closed captions read "a pretty decent approximation to half Tau." Wonder who wrote up the captions...

7:27, he says "pi" and subtitles says "half tau"

All my dinner parties start and end with slideshows about various topics of which my guests are wrong about. I throw awesome dinner parties.

7:18 I cried, what a perfect delivery

"We are all outside of an airplane..." That, actually, is an incredibly smart point, and it DOES matter a lot. Like!

Matt's "Come on!" face at 7:25 just puts that joke on another level

Steve I might take you up on your offer, but be warned - you've let yourself in for a challenge. My mother in law believes in astrology and homeopathy. Her visits are such fun.

I knew we'd get some 0 shenanigans at some point, was not disappointed!

When you said the authors feel that -10 was when it starts to get cold, my first thought was, "Yeah, that sounds about right. That's the temperature when I stop wearing sweaters and start wearing my winter coat." I'm Canadian too.

8:48 "We've got all the numbers, we can WORK OUT THE TEMPERATURE--" instantly favorited.

Oh no. I'm stuck in an infinite loop between these two videos.

No one Callum : *noclips into earth*

Watching the two videos side by side was a fun but weird experience. It's a shame that Steve's clip finished a few seconds before Matt's, so by the end, they were out of sync. It got especially trippy after I'd re-synced them and the two Matts and two Steves were all talking in unison.

3:57 "Or ARE THEY?" *Vsauce theme starts playing"

Loving this! But, just for the fun of it: At 4:37, I understand it's a joke, but isn't it still a bit inconsistent (I know this is your point later on =) ) But still, even right there, either Alice is 0.5+3=3.5 meters, since its "six times taller than" and not "six times as tall", or Alice is 3 meters, but then the only sensible interpretation of Callums length is \approx 0.1667 m (which is literally wrong but still the interpretation most would make). I think you should change Alice length to 3.5m. Right now, you interpret 'times taller (shorter) than' in two different ways your self ;)

Matt's face at 7:34 just might be the best thing I've seen all day

If Alice is 6 times taller than Bob, doesn't that make her 3.5 meters tall? What you said would be "6 times _as_ tall". In fact, you used that same logic with the Callum/Debbie case because you multiplied Debbie's height by 6, and then _subtracted_ it from the original value. By that calculation, "6 times taller than" means multiplying by 6, and then adding onto the original value.

Love the τ vs π at the end!

10:02-10:10 "Cause Helen thinks she's hilarious..." That made me laugh the hardest

Saudi here, it start to get cold after 22C

I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks statements in the form of y is x times less than z are nonsense. I'm also glad that someone far more articulate than myself can explain why using humor .

Amazingly enough, the last equation that determines when the coldness starts gives same temperature for coldness start, whether you apply it in Fahrenheit or Kelvin. Bravo.

Love this! I regularly see, and regularly squirm, when I see advertisements making the same mistake. "This shampoo makes your hair 5x cleaner!" Say what?!

8:31 - Sounds like the definition of the Fahrenheit scale.

All these problems result from the fact that temperature does not belong to the *ratio* scale on the Scales of Measurement (a helpful acronym is "NOIR"- nominal, ordinal, interval, ratio). Only in the ratio scale, where there is a "real zero", would multiplication/division makes sense. Temperature is interval- that is, only addition/subtraction makes sense. Any student in an introductory stats course would learn this on the first day of the course. However, this video does a great job of explaining why we have scales of measurement and how to identify situations where one may be unsure if the appropriate scale is interval or ratio.

"The download costs just [half tau | pi] pounds..." In a segment where I laughed really hard (partly because I've had a similar argument about multiplying "coldness"), that may have been the loudest burst of laughter. Thank you, all three of you, for all of this!

the best part is how he slowly falls into insanity while arguing in the course of the video

"I often get emails from friends and family asking me to fix something" I get that as a doctor, and my reaction is the same

Im lucky enough to have seen the live show. Absolutely brilliant. Hungry for more

Absolutely brilliant, I hope to see more of his work!

But what about using the original Celsius scale where zero is the boiling point of water at one atmosphere and 100 is the freezing point? Freezer = 118 x 6 = 708 Zero Kelvin = 373.15 Airplane = 155 Hmmm. Nope.

Cold *does* start at -10°C, according to most landlords.

OMG what a paradoxial statement! Thank you for highlighting this "problem". Love to you!

AMAZING INTRO AND OUTRO, between both vids I had a laughing fit. Glad I subscribed, thank you wonderful person.

4:47 made me laugh really hard just the mental image of a guy who walks around underground is HILARIOUS

7:25 Steve: "pretty decent approximation to pi" Closed Captions: "pretty decent approximation to half Tau"

This is the kind of content I live for 😂😂😂 I'm in tears lol

What is the source of that "fact"? I wish I could share it with my students to talk about absolute and relative measures...

Okay, but did you manage to fix the printer?

Need more of science stand-up. It's captivating and educational.

VERY skeptical to the possibility of "Science Comedy" -- even after seeing this admittedly funny, creative, and very well-executed routine, ESPECIALLY because I've had VERY, VERY, VERY similar experiences (yes, that's plural, as in I've had multiple, uncannily similar experiences)... NO, this is NOT a plug, and I think this may even be the first time I've even so much as commented any any/every social media, or otherwise, related to Steve Mould), so I BOUGHT THE DVD... WOW! You pulled it off as near to comic perfection as could be, considering the topic{s} -- and, of course, I also have to mention those up there on stage with you as well... VERY FUNNY! GREAT WORK! THX!

This is a wonderful work of art. My favorite stand up comedy routine to date.

I would like to get more stand ups like these in future.

Honestly, this phrasing has been bugging me for some time now, and I'm glad I have a good source to back up my disagreeing with it :P Also you're a scientist, can you fix my printer quickly?

The video I have been waiting for. Great Job, Steve. Had a great time.

Great stuff. I just bought a copy. Thanks, Steve!

"5 x less" was a common example of Ebonics back when that was a thing.

Having lived in Finland for many years I think this is true. At - 10 C it starts to feel important to roll my sleeves down.

Before I clicked on this video I thought to myself "Seriously, how funny can a stand-up comedy about science be?". OHHH I WAS SO WRONG This was hilarious

This is really so cool. And fantastically smart. And funny. I truly enjoyed it. Thanks.

I'm stuck in an infinite loop of watchin Matt, then Steve, then Matt, then Steve, ......

I'm more curious if it's valid in terms of coldness meaning: the rate at which a human body loses heat based off of temperature, pressure, and wind speed. which is the effective feeling of coldness. probably still not 6 but if "coldness" should mean anything in pop science, I think it should mean that.

The real issue here is that "cold" is not a unit of measurement. Heat is measured and if there is very little heat we say that's "cold" but you cannot quantify the absence of something.

I'm starting to use your videos as prompts for my university chemistry homework assignments! Thanks.

and they're Canadian lol

Cold doesn't actually exist as a thing, it is a feeling that one would experience that is just a lower temperature or energy in the form of heat relative to what one would consider to be warm or hot. Also we have yet to actually be able to achieve creating true absolute zero. We have what is mostly likely to be created the lowest temperature space in the universe however that is the closest to being absolute zero that exists or ever has existed possibly unless prior to the big bang singularity absolute zero conditions existed ... if space time existed.. or anything.. I'm starting to think now that maybe this might be the eventual joke in the video maybe? I should watch the last 4 minutes now.

I watched this when it first came out 4 years ago and just had a thought on it today. I believe there is a meaning but the numbers the authors use don't quite work. My memory of this video was that the claim was the temp outside an airplane is 2 times as cold as a freezer, the correct factor was 6. If 2 then it does work, here's how. We do not need a zero reference for coldness or hotness, we need a zero reference for comfort. If we presume 70F / 21C is comfortable, then some level of cold will be measured as a negative departure from comfort, not a negative departure from the threshold of cold. Steve's right the recommended temp in a freezer is 0F / -18C. This can range from -2F to +6F, a very warm freezer (if you don't mind liquid ice cream) would be 10F / -12C. The departure from comfort (70F / 21C) is -60F (70F - 10F) or -33C (21C - -12C). So a freezer's "coldness" is 60F below 70F or 33C below 21C. If the comparison were twice not 6 times, then: Twice as cold as a freezer means twice the departure from comfort, i.e. 120F below 70F = -50F or 66C below 21C = -45C. With the rounding I've done -50F is very close to -45C, and this is (approximately) air temperature at cruising altitude of 30,000 ft. By this measure you could say that the air outside a plane is indeed twice as cold as inside a freezer. But not 6 times. My memory 4 years after the fact was in error and the original claim doesn't hold up. I do believe that both Steve and his friend were justified in saying it is an ambiguous statement, but, it does have meaning. I looked at it today not by crunching numbers to make something fit but rather looking at the base line reasoning. "Coldness" itself doesn't really have a meaning unless you also consider "hotness" at which point I realized both are measured as a departure from "comfort".

Steve's T-shirt and a video about lasers and bubbles brought me back here. Was worth another watch.

-10 * 6 = -60' C very approximately.

Let's take this up another notch: What if "coldness" is the heat flux between human skin at body temperature and the air at each respective temperature?! 🤔🤔🤔

I like to think of this kind of question by comparing it to distances. Imagine "higher/larger/warmer/etc" is like travelling north, and "lower/smaller/colder/etc" is like travelling south. Now when you travel any distance, you obviously have to start _somewhere._ Therefore, if you say something like "this place is twice as far as that place", that alone doesn't make sense. There has to be a third place. "This place is twice as far _from another place_ than that place is _from the other place._ Therefore, if you say "this is twice as tall as that", what you should be thinking about it is "this is twice as tall _from the ground_ than that". And if you say "this is twice as short", you should have a third object. If for example, object A is 30 feet tall, and object B is 25 feet tall, you can say "B is shorter than A". If a third object C is 20 feet tall, then, since B is 5 feet shorter than A, and C is _10_ feet shorter than A, you can then say "C is twice as short (as A), as B (is as short as A)"

Now I'm interested in Matt's blurb about "edit live footage using projections outside of a sphere"… Edit: Oh wait, is it the "Stand-up comedy routine using a live spherical camera" that's appearing in the watch-this-next list?

Mediterranean here, cold starts at +15 degrees C

Maybe you can help we with another Math problem. You said that a person "6 times taller" is 6 times the size so Person B=6A. But if I say a person is "0,5 times taller" isnt that Person B=100% height of Person A + 50% the height, so B=1,5A? And if I say a person is "1 times taller" than Person B=2A? Because in my mind, If I say a person is "0 times taller", then they both are the same height. Maybe you can answer this terrible Math/wording Problem :) Cheers!

Coldness could be on a logarithmic scale relative to existing temperature scales. You'll need another point of reference to determine the curvature. But you could do another two minutes on the class of all curves that intersect those two points and the interesting relations that could be extrapolated from there.

«and they're Canadian» ahah! well, I'm better going back to school! ;) Excellent talk, I love it !

7:27 What is this supposed to mean? [cc]

I'm a cold and I can confirm that -10c is about when it starts feeling Canadian

Havent watched the whole video yet but i love that small pause in the beginning after "actual science"

Great video. I will use it in my Statistics class. The original statement is also bad statistics. In Statistics, temperature cannot be described on what’s called the ratio level of measurement, which means it can’t be described by “6 times” or “half”. It can only be described using differences, which is called the interval level of measurement.

My freezer is at about -10C so they might be right :P

Temperature in freezer 0°C Temperature outside airplane =6x0°C=0°C

I know of this. The approximation of x6 was based on the following quote: "At 35,000 ft. (11,000 m), the typical altitude of a commercial jet, the air pressure drops to less than a quarter of its value at sea level, and the outside temperature drops below negative 60 degrees Fahrenheit." - The Engineering Toolbox

I think the inlaws and the book were referring to multiplying the relative value of the temperatures from 0C. For example if a freezer was -9 degrees Celsius, it would work. The average temperature outside a plane is -54 degrees C. (-54 divided by 6 is -9C and therefore 6 x -9 = -54) However a freezer should be at -18C. I would say that the air outside of an aeroplane is actually 3 times (not 6 times) colder than in a freezer if we assume that outside is -54C and a freezer is -18C. (-54 divided by 18 is 3 and therefore 3 X -18 = -54)

This episode is six times shorter than the entire show.

Around 6:25... What exactly did you say? "Clever use of humor there" or "Clever use of humid air" ? (or both? :-)

I've watched this video 6 times and it's still funny. Maybe I should spring for the CD.

I wish I could find the authors of the book just to figure out what the heck they meant. Maybe the idea was something like "people exposed to that temperature find it six times as painful" or "people lose heat six times as quickly at that temperature than in a freezer (taking wind into account)" or something. "Six times as cold" really is a ludicrous concept.

It kills me when I see ambiguous math in commercials. Charmin toilet paper claims you’ll use 3 times less paper versus the leading brand. An air conditioning company claims you’ll use 4 times less electricity. Really? Enew = Eold - 4Eold? So your air conditioner is going to put 3Eold back into the grid? That’s better than going solar!

Come on dude, they're clearly using a nonlinear heat-measuring method. Just the fact that we choose to measure heat with thermometers and the expansion of fluids doesn't make these canadians wrong, smh

Excellent analysis. One of my "pet peeves" is when people say "times less" as in "gas cost 8 times less 50 years ago than it does today" . Obviously, the intent is to say that gas cost one-eighth 50 years ago than what it costs today, or that gas costs 8 times more today than it did 50 years ago. But, "times" means multiplication and "less" means subtraction, so you would end up with a negative number. That would mean that 50 years ago, they would pay you to get gasoline.

had some nice nerdie laughterswhile watching. thank you

steve: ... is a pretty decent approximation to pi... captions: ... is a pretty decent approximation to half tau... me thinks the anti-pi movement is in march...

can't bring myself to purchase, the price is irrational! :)

3:12 "Also some aeroplanes have freezers on them" Actually, that freezer is the only one *not* outside of the aeroplane, so the temperature in that freezer could be 6x less cold than outside the plane (whatever that might mean) and is precisely the case that allows your head *not* to explode. She "does the music things"?

This is funny af. More please!👍

and they were Canadian... Oh my god they were Canadian

2:58 the way he delivers this line gets me every time

You´re a joybuster! It´s hilarious! I allways grin when I hold floppy disk 42 of 144 in my hands ;-)

Man, Steve is too good!" Love this guy.

6 times more than x = 7x 6 times as much as x = 6x 6 times less than x = -5x if you're on a scale where negatives don't make sense: 6 times less than x = 5x/6

Reminds me of a conversation when someone said "It's twice as hot as it was yesterday!" And I responded "No! It's not 303° Celsius!" Which led to an hour long debate about the concept of temperature, and finally my decision to never interact with anybody with so little regard for the scientific method. I mean, honestly, if you're not capable of understanding that temperature is a measure of molecular kinetic energy, how could you be capable of any sort of meaningful interaction??

Works in Fahrenheit also. Freezer temperatures usually -10 F and outside temperature of airline in flight at altitude is 6x = -60 F. But that's making the results fit the equation not the other way around.

Oh just Steve. Great stuff, bought the Floppy Disk version (because that is hilarious). I once pirated (bad me) Quake in 57 DD disks back in the day. :D