What was the most expensive book ever?
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- čas přidán 7. 04. 2022
- Support my Humble Pi filming: get ridiculous perks. www.kickstarter.com/projects/...
See the filming happen in person! Thursday 21 April 2022 at the Bloomsbury Theatre in London. www.ucl.ac.uk/culture/whats-o...
Original blog post about the book prices by Michael Eisen of the Eisen Lab, University of California, Berkeley. www.michaeleisen.org/blog/?p=358
Wikipedia is a good place to start reading about the 2010 flash crash. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_fl...
Or read my book Humble Pi, obvs. mathsgear.co.uk/collections/b...
Thanks to all of my Patreon supporters who mean I can mess around with animated videos like this. They are not economical to make otherwise. You too can help support me: / standupmaths
CORRECTIONS
- None yet, let me know if you spot anything.
Animations and editing by William Marler wmad.co.uk/
Music by Howard Carter
Voice work by Gemma Arrowsmith and Tom Crowley
Illustrations by Vicky Neville
Writing and shameless plugging by Matt Parker
Additional filming by Alex Genn-Bash
Design by Simon Wright and Adam Robinson
MATT PARKER: Stand-up Mathematician
Website: standupmaths.com/
US book: www.penguinrandomhouse.com/bo...
UK book: mathsgear.co.uk/collections/b... - Zábava
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"Technically yes, but that's never going to happen!"
Software engineers: 😬😬😬
Never is a *really* long time
“That’s never going to happen!”
Narrator: “Unfortunately, that is exactly what happened.”
BWAAAHAHHAHAHA ahh homie, I'm a software engineer (blessed with home working and all that), and yeah, software engineers are the most careless and just loafers all around... we know collapses in our system will come, but we don't do anything, because we can't. That's what happens when systems are so complex that the human mind can hold all the different moving parts at the same time in our minds (it is said that a max of 7 different things at a time can be in our mind... now compare that to a system with billions of different things happening at a time... not even the best software engineer will make a different face from these you put: :grimacing_face: :grimacing_face: :grimacing_face:
'Character says something will never happen right before it happens' cliche **DING**
This was so good! Animations were brilliant. And now I understand why I occasionally see bizarrely priced old textbooks. None in the millions sadly but several in the low thousands
Those are just greedy people selling to desperate students.
@@phs125 actually both is not soo unlikely might also be some gready humans "provoke" the bots to also increase their price maybe even starting something similar as described in the video.
Some textbooks are really priced couple hundreds or in the low thousands.They think not many people will buy those textbooks anyways, those are very niche, so to make some money from them they price them absurdly high.
What is the music at 1:40?
@@Asdfgfdmn Its a remixed version of Matt's intro theme
A friend of mine who ran a small publisher had a different kind of computer error price one of the books he published at over $1B. The distributor mixed up fields in their database and ended up putting the ISBN in the price field (back when the ISBN was only 10 digits, early 2000s). As he said at the time, it might be a bit expensive, but he only needed to sell 1.
I was just recently in a bookstore and was surprised one book was 100 times more expensive than I expected. As if they ignored the decimal point for cents or something.
@@NetAndyCz If it's a university text it's probably not a mistake lol
Nice to see you on a random youtube Jim. Used to watch your streams around 2019-2020
@@frag0638 haha no, I had to pay a lot for those, it was a regular cookbook that was priced 100 times more then the books around it from the same series
Libgen bro
"Jump back *in* through windows and blow cocaine *out* of their noses." I've been laughing at this for far too long. Thank you, Mr. Parker.
Except I'm fairly sure they don't do a lot of coke during a crash
I think they puff out "green leaf weed"
@@asheep7797 Happy 4/20 haha
Ha ha ha it’s funny because stock traders kill themselves by jumping out windows!
@@TheGreatAtario , probably more accurate to say they'd blow the bullets out of their brains, but that's probably too gruesome for CZcams.
the most expensive book ever is literally any mandatory textbook
especially the ones the prof wrote themselves
I swear all of these books are always 100 pages, loose bound, written by the prof, $500 :')
this practice should be illegal. anyways theres this certain website where you can just download the book and print it yourself.
I went to university in Germany and I don't think we have an equivalent to textbooks... at least not im my field.. I had to buy a few "skripts" but they only cost what the nearest copyshop would charge for them.. and like 2 actually published books that where about 7,95€ each.
Back in the late 1960's, the MOST I ever paid for a college textbook was my physics text at $9.50 (And I still have it!)
“I have no idea what stock traders do during an ‘anti-crash’- I assume jump back _in_ through windows”
Oh my god I almost died lmaooook
$21Million (or 2.1billion cents) sound suspiciously close to a signed integer overflow error. If profnat was using a signed 32 bit integer to represent the the value in cents and had no error checking it would have a limit of $21,474,836.48 before it circled right around and tried to set a massive negative number, which presumably Amazon would have had an issue with and then god knows what would have happened. No idea where 10623 would have come from but it might have been Amazon's end trying to interpret a massive negative value.
Don't know if it means anything but, 10'623 or 10'623.00 with cents is not totally far off 2^20 at 10'485.76 ~1.3% error
They were just following their simple algorithms. Eventually profnath reached $18,651,547.20, after which Bordeebooks set a 27.06% higher price of $23,698,655.93. Then profnath attempted to multiply this by 0.9983 to get a lower price of $23,658,368.20, but like you said, that's out of range. If you are right that it was limited to a signed 32-bit int, then the maximum representable price would be $21,474,836.47. The price it attempted to set would be --$19,218,290.30, but it can't set a negative price. That error could well have been what caught the attention of the person running profnath.
That was my first suspiscion too, and I wondered if Matt would pick up on it. Then I remembered his preferred language is Python, with its "unlimited" (well, memory filling) ints and wondered if he might not have 2,147,483,647 memorized as one of his important numbers in programming where the rest of us reach for longs.
In the late nineties, after a weird refund situation the checkout person at Sainsbury’s mentioned that I had 85,899 Reward vouchers (pre-Nectar) on my account and asked if I'd like them as paper vouchers.
It didn’t take long to realise that was a £2.50 voucher for every £250 of the £21,474,836.47 I’d so definitely spent to date on my impoverished student budget.
Damn my honesty for not saying yes please.
@@tomgidden They were planning on handing you 86,000 paper vouchers for £2.50 each? Isn't that like ten reams of A4 paper just printed with vouchers?
Or did they have big £50 vouchers you could take or something, so they only needed to give you 4,300?
Hey Matt! Not related to the video, BUT. I wanted to stop by and say thank you BECAUSE.
I’ll be graduating from my University in a month, and my degree is Mathematics and Physics BECAUSE OF YOU & also singing banana and also Brady and his Numberphile channel.
Just the whole Numberphile team in general. But thank you for being able to take your passion and love for Math and being able to extend it to me in such a way that it really catalyzed my love for mathematics into an actual passion and curiosity for it.
THANK YOU.
That is so great to hear. Glad we could help you find your passion as well!
@@standupmaths *insert Jane Street promotion here*
Congratulations!
Congratulations!!
Well done!
Without a doubt, Matt is hoping a group of people will see this and fund the kickstarter. Then, another group of people will see that and think, "Yes, I'll support this too." And then, another group of people...Finally, Matt will finally be able to afford the helicopter to fly 314 lasers above the venue for the intro.
It's already at twice his bigger goal. It hit the lower goal after less than 2 hours after his small video for it on his second channel.
That would be worth funding, but then Steve Mould would insist there should be 628 lasers. Either number would be allowed, as the Bloomsbury Theatre only prohibits exactly 256 lasers being used in its shows. Can’t imagine why they are so specific.
at this moment (13:20 BST 9th Apr) he is 5.6382 times the base funding... well on the way to a substantial array of crane mounted lasers :D At this point we might even be at Martian heat ray levels. Although at 1816 backers some of that money is now going into hiring the theatre for an additional week to film all the laser credits
@@jameslister4359 Nice catch. I totally forgot the pi v. tau debate.
As of 17:30 09 Apr, it's more or less Tau times funded.
3:01 “It’s a Kind of Magic Square” Brady Haran. Real subtle, Matt. 🤣
Wow, what a production value. If only there was a convenient way to throw money at you to perhaps help improve future filming, but alas. Not to start kicking myself when I'm down but I guess I'll just never know.
I see what you kicked there!
@@alleng2845 Ugh. Don't get him....started?
I also see what you did there, but on a more serious note you know he does have a Patreon for more regular throwing of money at him.
Probably could buy a book from him
I’m broke , I’ll just re watch the video multiple times while not skipping the adds , especially since I have already missed the proposed filming date by almost two weeks.
"There is no upper bound to how good this can be." I'm really, really curious what the filming would be like if you raised an absurd amount of money. Like, what sorts of filming would happen at, say, $23,698,655.93 of funding?
That will never happen. Of course Matt would set a reasonable limit to it, like $3,141,592.65
@@tobiaswilhelmi4819 that’s too much, I think the limit would be set at 2,718,281.82$
@@youtubeuser6250 *$2,718,281.82
that stock market anti-crash joke just made me spit water all over myself
A couple of competing pricing bots worked out in my favor. About ten years ago, I was looking for a copy of Ignition by John Clark--a history of rocket fuels. It was out of print at the time and the only copies I could find were a few used ones on amazon listed for over $20,000. I looked at the prices the next day, and two of them had a cheaper price. Apparently, these bots were programmed to lower their price so that they were the cheapest by some fraction of a percent. I wrote a script of my own to keep watch on the prices. After a month, the price had dropped from $26,000 to just $80. At that point, one of the books disappeared, so I bought the other one before the price increased again.
A year later, a new printing of the book was issued and I could get a new copy for $20. Such is my luck.
Absolutely love that book. As someone with a chemistry background it reads like a standup comedy act
Hang on there, mister! Don't go trying to convince _me_ that $00.01 or $100,000 are "irrational" prices!
I know right? They have 1 significant digit, that's like not even close to infinite.
Bravo! This is how comments should be on this channel. 🏆
Parker irrationals.
They're Parker irrational numbers!
The number of coins I needed to pay my £√2 bill was ab-surd.
This FINALLY explains why I occasionally see absurdly overpriced items on Amazon! I've been wondering what was ultimately causing that for years!
I'm a software developer, and though I don't work on automation, I've definitely had edge cases bite me and my team. (It's something all devs need to contend with, honestly.) Recently, we had a client who was using an old version of our app because they didn't want to upgrade for some reason. But then they wanted bugs fixed that were already fixed in our new version, so we told them we'd just update them to the latest release, which for reference, was about 15-ish minor versions ahead. We tested locally and with our QA team, and everything was fine, so we went ahead with the production deploy... and then we start getting reports from our client that one of our app's screens is crashing for them, and the CMS used to customize that screen (or, importantly, to reset it to default configuration) was also crashing.
One emergency conference call later, and two hours of investigative debugging, and I realized the problem: our new version was expecting configs in a different format than the old version, and though we updated that format for the default configs, they had configuration changes from their previous version -- i.e. 15 versions ago -- overriding the defaults and breaking everything. This issue could literally only happen in the case of a sudden huge version bump... which, psh, who would jump that many versions at once, right? 😅
For those wondering how the story ends: by the time I found the problem, and realized a simple config change would fix it, the client had already reverted to their old version and now we looked bad.
2:21 I thought you were talking about a stage show based on The Making of a Fly, and I was very concerned for some biologists’ mental health
"Blow cocaine out of their noses." That line made me laugh.
I'll show myself out.
Yes, that was a good laugh. Thanks Matt
😆 I remember that one from the book -- made me snort
@@AaronOfMpls Not sure if that choice of words is deliberate, but if so, well done.
In this case, their laughter made the line.
I literally choked on my brew when I heard that
Congratulations to Vicky Neville, William Marler and Howard Carter for their artistic work, and to Parker and whoever produces his videos for putting so much work into them. Well done.
Especially those robot.... arms the person has at their feet.
10:30 The words "Irrational prices" got me excited for a second.
Yes, it's always more fun when the prices cycle into the 4th dimension. It's as fun as imaginary interest rates.
This is hilarious. Literally THIS MONTH I'm doing a course on molecular and developmental biology in my MSc and we mentioned this book, without the pricing debacle! So thanks for the extra info.
Also, for anyone interested, those buzzwords at the beginning are relevant, for as much as they may seem made up 😂
Heh, BUZZwords
At the end... you smacked Buzzy! Now you have to put him in the LASER credits.... come on 🙂... LASER credits. LOL
Your animations are amazing by the way, they’re such a vibe
Hey, it’s me!
@@alexwang982 Hey, I'm you but more
As an entomologist I feel I must comment on Buzzy’s leg placement and two segmented body. Also the wing venation leaves something to be desired. But seriously, looking forward to the special!
And he has the making of a fly book as well!! No excuse 😂
At least the red eyes are on point😂
But not hexagonal eye segments, which is a geometry gaffe a mathematician wouldn't be party too surely??
A Parker Fruitfly. I'd invent some latin, but I'm too lazy to google.
@@f.eugenedunnamiii9452 For these guys it'd be Drosophila parkeri, or D. matti. I'll have to name something after Matt one of these days...Phyllophaga parkeri?
Animation is on another level in this video.
Also I've definitely seen my share of out of print books at algorithmically inflated prices, but I think it's been more than the tens of thousands.
A great example of so-called 'artificial intelligence' going awry. Or looking at it from a basic programming perspective...A great example of a loop with a poorly conceived termination condition. Thank you Matt.
I saw humble pi live in NYC and even got my book signed
1:38 I am loving this remix!
Nice touch having a paper for π pounds, but I can't help noticing you need two of them to get all of the story. Surely it's better to buy one paper for τ pounds and get it all at once.
Yeah, it's not perfect, but they gave it a go. Such is the way of the Parker Press.
Ah, I see you're a fellow man of culture, and probably a Steve Mould fan.
You need to spend £2π to get the full 360° view of the world.
@@philrichards7240 You could say you have to pay 2π pounds to understand the full diameter of the story.
If you spend £τ, you still don't know what “something like this” is. You'll need to spend at least £π more for one or more previous copies that explain it.
Congratulations on 1 million subs Matt, you have inspired many (including me) to view maths in a completely new way! Great video :)
I just paid Matt Parker to intentionally misspell my name... What the hell am I doing with my life?
I reduced my pledge to the minimum just so I could afford to order it 5 times!
This was simultaneously hilarious and absolutely terrifying.
I hope people start programming bots more sensibly.
LOVE the self-awareness behind "I dunno, this seems like preordering with extra st-" *SMACK* 😂😂
Congrats on 1 million!
Something that had been puzzling me about Amazon’s obscure book prices now makes sense. You’ve earned my support for your project plus three head shakes and several chuckles...
Some authors wrote a lot of books but less popular ones became more expensive as harder to find even if by the same author.
Best video you made so far, really enjoyed the level of entertainment and production value in here.
Absolutely love how the production value of these videos are just going up and up and up!
I'm always amazed by the effort and production value of these videos! Even though I already knew this story (having read it in some book somewhere, if only I could remember the title and author ...), it was a riveting watch, and I always love it when you 'interact' with your own video. Will definitely be looking into that Kickstarter stuff!
Was it in a Dr Karl book? I read about this before in "House of Karls"
Congratulations on 1M subs, and glad it happened after your annual pi day video!
Absolutely hilarious video! Extremely well made, with a fantastic script!
Big congratulations on your project! I am waiting to see the result but, I already know it's going to be awesome! I read Humble Pi soon after release and gifted it to my maths teacher after my Highers Grade (He enjoyed it very much), just to keep good teaching and inspirations going.
All the best!
There was a D&D sourcebook that went to print, but shortly before print, someone changed all of the "mage" text to "wizard". So a fireball would cause 10d6 points of dawizard.
Love the humor in these vids.
Your productions are getting soooo good, congrats and can't wait for the perks! :)
hey Matt, congratulations for the 1M subscribers! I’m following from some time ago and am very proud of such achievement.
i love the aeshetics of this video so much!!
these animations are SO CUTE and the script is so fun! love you Matt Parker!
These animations are lovely. Wonderful skits and jokes.
🥳🥳 Congratulations to 1 Million subscriber!! 🍻🥂🎉🎊 You finally got it and totally deserve it Parker! 🤙🏻
I want to acknowledge your pure amount of love for pi shown subconsciously in this video, I noticed all of the little things and I loved it.
That might explain the price of "The Awk Programming Language"; a great book about a nice little programming language, that really has no business being as expensive as it is.
Hey, congrats on the million subscribers! Maybe now Steve Mould will stop being so smug :)
Maybe
Except Steve has 1.55M now, so the smugness will probably continue.
Since Steve insists on using factor 2 where it clearly doesn't belong (tau... sigh...) he should be considered to only have 0.78 Million subscribers.
So in my mind Matt won 😁
@@Tahgtahv I hope The Algorithm will continue to recommend both their channels such that Matt ends up with at least 0.99 of Steve's subscriber count, and in turn Steve maintains 1.55 times Matt's subscriber count
This video is actually amazing! Matt you have come so far. Subbed for life now.
Thank you for the video!
Congrats on the 1 mil subs!!! I've been keeping close tabs on your asymptotic approach to it for a while now, glad to see you get over the hump.
crazy good production value, keep up the good work!
Matt finally got to 1M subscribers!! Very well earned. These videos are always great.
Sometimes I feel grateful that this platform is free and we get to watch a high quality of edutainment video like this 🥺🥺🥺 btw congrats Matt for the 1M subs !!
I really liked this video. The animation and the voices were great!
To be fair, regarding the first draft of the Book of Mormon. It was engraved on golden tablets. That's got to put the price up a little bit.
Yes, I must echo the other comments about the production of this video. Outstanding! Entertaining and informative too of course. 👍
Brilliant. Bonus points for the Pi reference in the newspaper prices.
Matt, I am more than happy to support you in this endeavor.
I started watching this and saw the channel had hit 1M subs. Congratulations Matt!!
Always love when there is a new theme remix
Shoutout to Howard Carter. Remixing the same theme for every video and it never gets old.
The production values on this video are AMAZING.
I remember when a similar thing to this happened on Amazon uk and the price of many DVD's crashed to 1p including postage....I don't recall just how long it stayed that way but I do remember ordering a couple of DVD's at that price and was surprised when Amazon honoured the price. I always assumed it was some kind of price matching bots running out of control
I've seen other items priced at $.00. I figured they were errors and didn't buy any. :(
@Gertyutz I often see stuff priced suspiciously low, but with a much higher shipping cost tacked on, so it could also be a trick like that
I love the animations of this video. it's insane.
loved it! thanks!
Really well done. Cheers Matt
Congratulations on the 1 million! Well deserved 😀
Amazing animations, interesting story. Well done
CONGRATULATIONS MATT ON A MILLION SUBSCRIBERS!!
Loving the animations in this video!
Congrats for 1 000 000 subscribers! 🍾
"The Making of a Fly" sounds like a great title for a movie about this whole mishap.
This was an incredible production, bravo
Fascinating little story, thanks Matt. Hope the kickstarter goes well
love the animations!
I love me some good quality maths videos! Happy 1million subs!
The thing I love about Matt's videos are the small details, like the cost of his newspapers. Brilliant 😉
This was incredible!
ONE MILLION! YOU HIT ONE MILLION! CONGRATULATIONS!
I love these animations
1 Million subs! congrats.
Those dismembered robot arms near the end are rather… suspicious. 😂😂😂😵💫😵💫😵💫
I saw that too ! 🤣
Congrats on 1 million subs!
The production value on that intro animation is amazing!
Hilarious as always mat. Interezzzting topic 😉🪰
The quality of his show will diverge to infinity if he keeps on promoting like this :D
Awesome Presentation!
CONGRATULATIONS ON 1M SUBS!
Congrats on 1mil matt!!!
Congrats on 1mil Matt!
I put it to you that this is the best Matt Parker intro to date..
I was wondering where I had heard this story before, then I realized it was _from you_ in Humble Pi!
Holy production value!
I am an elementary (primary) teacher. I was looking for a book on the desert the other day and found just the one I wanted on amazon. The hard back was about $20 but the paper back was over $900. I found several similar examples from similar books. After watching this I would guess they are from the same seller and that there is something hinky in the algorithm. Very informative and interesting.
The disembodied voice was just hilarious. And Buzzy too 😂 "I don't know, this sounds like pre-order with extra steps" What a _Rick_ thing to say.