What was the most expensive book ever?
Ойын-сауық
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...
Пікірлер: 894
"Technically yes, but that's never going to happen!" Software engineers: 😬😬😬
@neilgerace355
2 жыл бұрын
Never is a *really* long time
@brennanruiz1803
2 жыл бұрын
“That’s never going to happen!” Narrator: “Unfortunately, that is exactly what happened.”
@bucherregaldomi9084
2 жыл бұрын
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:
@SgtSupaman
2 жыл бұрын
'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
@phs125
2 жыл бұрын
Those are just greedy people selling to desperate students.
@ebentually
2 жыл бұрын
@@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.
@maythesciencebewithyou
2 жыл бұрын
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.
@Asdfgfdmn
2 жыл бұрын
What is the music at 1:40?
@terra_creeper
2 жыл бұрын
@@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.
@NetAndyCz
2 жыл бұрын
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.
@frag0638
2 жыл бұрын
@@NetAndyCz If it's a university text it's probably not a mistake lol
@oblivion_2852
2 жыл бұрын
Nice to see you on a random youtube Jim. Used to watch your streams around 2019-2020
@NetAndyCz
2 жыл бұрын
@@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
@markusklyver6277
2 жыл бұрын
Libgen bro
the most expensive book ever is literally any mandatory textbook
@1224chrisng
2 жыл бұрын
especially the ones the prof wrote themselves
@emolgana
2 жыл бұрын
I swear all of these books are always 100 pages, loose bound, written by the prof, $500 :')
@josefanon8504
2 жыл бұрын
this practice should be illegal. anyways theres this certain website where you can just download the book and print it yourself.
@olik136
2 жыл бұрын
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.
@gedstrom
2 жыл бұрын
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!)
"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.
@TheGreatAtario
2 жыл бұрын
Except I'm fairly sure they don't do a lot of coke during a crash
@asheep7797
2 жыл бұрын
I think they puff out "green leaf weed"
@Rose_Harmonic
2 жыл бұрын
@@asheep7797 Happy 4/20 haha
@simperingham
2 жыл бұрын
Ha ha ha it’s funny because stock traders kill themselves by jumping out windows!
@SgtSupaman
2 жыл бұрын
@@TheGreatAtario , probably more accurate to say they'd blow the bullets out of their brains, but that's probably too gruesome for KZread.
$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.
@HasekuraIsuna
2 жыл бұрын
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
@EebstertheGreat
2 жыл бұрын
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.
@DavidCookeZ80
2 жыл бұрын
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.
@tomgidden
2 жыл бұрын
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.
@EebstertheGreat
2 жыл бұрын
@@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?
3:01 “It’s a Kind of Magic Square” Brady Haran. Real subtle, Matt. 🤣
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.
@standupmaths
2 жыл бұрын
That is so great to hear. Glad we could help you find your passion as well!
@euanmcdougall1917
2 жыл бұрын
@@standupmaths *insert Jane Street promotion here*
@NoahStolee
2 жыл бұрын
Congratulations!
@themathsgeek8528
2 жыл бұрын
Congratulations!!
@aL3891_
2 жыл бұрын
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.
@LeoStaley
2 жыл бұрын
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.
@jameslister4359
2 жыл бұрын
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.
@ThePoxun
2 жыл бұрын
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
@bobjoe1469
2 жыл бұрын
@@jameslister4359 Nice catch. I totally forgot the pi v. tau debate.
@juliannicholls
2 жыл бұрын
As of 17:30 09 Apr, it's more or less Tau times funded.
“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
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.
@alleng2845
2 жыл бұрын
I see what you kicked there!
@heydannypark
2 жыл бұрын
@@alleng2845 Ugh. Don't get him....started?
@Tahgtahv
2 жыл бұрын
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.
@XD152awesomeness
2 жыл бұрын
Probably could buy a book from him
@philvanderlaan5942
2 жыл бұрын
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.
that stock market anti-crash joke just made me spit water all over myself
"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?
@tobiaswilhelmi4819
2 жыл бұрын
That will never happen. Of course Matt would set a reasonable limit to it, like $3,141,592.65
@youtubeuser6250
2 жыл бұрын
@@tobiaswilhelmi4819 that’s too much, I think the limit would be set at 2,718,281.82$
@Oturan20
Жыл бұрын
@@youtubeuser6250 *$2,718,281.82
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.
@bsheaves
Жыл бұрын
Absolutely love that book. As someone with a chemistry background it reads like a standup comedy act
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.
Hang on there, mister! Don't go trying to convince _me_ that $00.01 or $100,000 are "irrational" prices!
@Tahgtahv
2 жыл бұрын
I know right? They have 1 significant digit, that's like not even close to infinite.
@landsgevaer
2 жыл бұрын
Bravo! This is how comments should be on this channel. 🏆
@mscha
2 жыл бұрын
Parker irrationals.
@Anonymous-df8it
2 жыл бұрын
They're Parker irrational numbers!
@colmx8441
2 жыл бұрын
The number of coins I needed to pay my £√2 bill was ab-surd.
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
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 😂
@bwayagnes2452
2 жыл бұрын
Heh, BUZZwords
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.
@jgagnier
2 жыл бұрын
Especially those robot.... arms the person has at their feet.
Your animations are amazing by the way, they’re such a vibe
@alexwang982
2 жыл бұрын
Hey, it’s me!
@mohammadazad8350
2 жыл бұрын
@@alexwang982 Hey, I'm you but more
1:38 I am loving this remix!
10:30 The words "Irrational prices" got me excited for a second.
@blumoogle2901
2 жыл бұрын
Yes, it's always more fun when the prices cycle into the 4th dimension. It's as fun as imaginary interest rates.
"Blow cocaine out of their noses." That line made me laugh. I'll show myself out.
@hastypete2
2 жыл бұрын
Yes, that was a good laugh. Thanks Matt
@AaronOfMpls
2 жыл бұрын
😆 I remember that one from the book -- made me snort
@lunasophia9002
2 жыл бұрын
@@AaronOfMpls Not sure if that choice of words is deliberate, but if so, well done.
@terencetsang9518
2 жыл бұрын
In this case, their laughter made the line.
@kianhaynes23
2 жыл бұрын
I literally choked on my brew when I heard that
Congratulations on 1 million subs Matt, you have inspired many (including me) to view maths in a completely new way! Great video :)
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.
Best video you made so far, really enjoyed the level of entertainment and production value in here.
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.
@loganstrong5426
2 жыл бұрын
Yeah, it's not perfect, but they gave it a go. Such is the way of the Parker Press.
@LeoStaley
2 жыл бұрын
Ah, I see you're a fellow man of culture, and probably a Steve Mould fan.
@philrichards7240
2 жыл бұрын
You need to spend £2π to get the full 360° view of the world.
@0utOfSkill
2 жыл бұрын
@@philrichards7240 You could say you have to pay 2π pounds to understand the full diameter of the story.
@mscha
2 жыл бұрын
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.
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!
@deanolium
2 жыл бұрын
And he has the making of a fly book as well!! No excuse 😂
@Schnabeltassentier
2 жыл бұрын
At least the red eyes are on point😂
@MarkTillotson
2 жыл бұрын
But not hexagonal eye segments, which is a geometry gaffe a mathematician wouldn't be party too surely??
@f.eugenedunnamiii9452
2 жыл бұрын
A Parker Fruitfly. I'd invent some latin, but I'm too lazy to google.
@KEELDISH
2 жыл бұрын
@@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?
I just paid Matt Parker to intentionally misspell my name... What the hell am I doing with my life?
@StanleyEricson
2 жыл бұрын
I reduced my pledge to the minimum just so I could afford to order it 5 times!
Absolutely love how the production value of these videos are just going up and up and up!
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!
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 love the aeshetics of this video so much!!
hey Matt, congratulations for the 1M subscribers! I’m following from some time ago and am very proud of such achievement.
Your productions are getting soooo good, congrats and can't wait for the perks! :)
Love the humor in these vids.
Congratulations on 1M subs, and glad it happened after your annual pi day video!
Absolutely hilarious video! Extremely well made, with a fantastic script!
these animations are SO CUTE and the script is so fun! love you Matt Parker!
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.
This video is actually amazing! Matt you have come so far. Subbed for life now.
🥳🥳 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.
Thank you for the video!
These animations are lovely. Wonderful skits and jokes.
crazy good production value, keep up the good work!
At the end... you smacked Buzzy! Now you have to put him in the LASER credits.... come on 🙂... LASER credits. LOL
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!
@SpaceRaccoon22
2 жыл бұрын
Was it in a Dr Karl book? I read about this before in "House of Karls"
Matt finally got to 1M subscribers!! Very well earned. These videos are always great.
Matt, I am more than happy to support you in this endeavor.
I really liked this video. The animation and the voices were great!
Yes, I must echo the other comments about the production of this video. Outstanding! Entertaining and informative too of course. 👍
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.
The production values on this video are AMAZING.
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...
@hydrolito
2 жыл бұрын
Some authors wrote a lot of books but less popular ones became more expensive as harder to find even if by the same author.
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.
Congrats on 1 million!
I love the animations of this video. it's insane.
I started watching this and saw the channel had hit 1M subs. Congratulations Matt!!
I saw humble pi live in NYC and even got my book signed
Congratulations on the 1 million! Well deserved 😀
Really well done. Cheers Matt
Hey, congrats on the million subscribers! Maybe now Steve Mould will stop being so smug :)
@dielaughing73
2 жыл бұрын
Maybe
@Tahgtahv
2 жыл бұрын
Except Steve has 1.55M now, so the smugness will probably continue.
@risfutile
2 жыл бұрын
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 😁
@bornach
2 жыл бұрын
@@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
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.
CONGRATULATIONS MATT ON A MILLION SUBSCRIBERS!!
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.
This was an incredible production, bravo
I love me some good quality maths videos! Happy 1million subs!
Loving the animations in this video!
loved it! thanks!
Amazing animations, interesting story. Well done
1 Million subs! congrats.
I love these animations
love the animations!
Congrats for 1 000 000 subscribers! 🍾
This was simultaneously hilarious and absolutely terrifying. I hope people start programming bots more sensibly.
The thing I love about Matt's videos are the small details, like the cost of his newspapers. Brilliant 😉
Fascinating little story, thanks Matt. Hope the kickstarter goes well
Hilarious as always mat. Interezzzting topic 😉🪰
LOVE the self-awareness behind "I dunno, this seems like preordering with extra st-" *SMACK* 😂😂
ONE MILLION! YOU HIT ONE MILLION! CONGRATULATIONS!
This was incredible!
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.
Congrats on 1 million subs!
The production value on that intro animation is amazing!
Brilliant. Bonus points for the Pi reference in the newspaper prices.
CONGRATULATIONS ON 1M SUBS!
This was an AWESOME video
Congrats on reaching 1 Million subscribers.
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
@Gertyutz
Жыл бұрын
I've seen other items priced at $.00. I figured they were errors and didn't buy any. :(
@edgarallenhoe3518
4 ай бұрын
@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
Holy production value!
Congrats on the million subscribers!!
Awesome Presentation!
Congrats on 1mil matt!!!
loved the animations, very well done
Congrats on 1mil Matt!
I like these little animations
This is why proof of goods in hand is critical in an interconnected world. Also, sellers like "Bordebook" should not disallowed from claiming an item is "in stock", when its "supplier" is actually within the market itself and the item is not on hand.
This was such an excellent video, I went and bought a copy of Humble Pi at the end of it to show my appreciation (and because I wanted the book)