Katy Guest: Rant & Rave (10/06/12)

Rant

I'm very worried about this new research which shows that women who worry perform worse in tasks. According to Michigan State University, anxiety affects more women than men, and makes them muck up even more spectacularly the things that they were worried about mucking up in the first place.

"The men tested showed no signs of anxiety," we're told. Bah, well maybe that's what the women were so worried about.

I have noticed that, in relationships, the more laid back one partner is, the more the other worries to compensate. So, if you want an easy life, get together with a fretter who will do all of your worrying for you. This must make we worriers perfect partners, which you'd think might make us chill out a bit, but people chilling out is very worrying.

Now we find out that we make more mistakes in difficult tasks than people who couldn't care less about making mistakes, the thought of which gives me heartburn and makes me want a drink... which is a worry.

Rave

The last episode of Dara O'Briain's series The School of Hard Sums was broadcast last week, thus concluding the best thing to happen on the Dave channel since Stephen Fry was cut off mid-sentence by an advert for beer.

For those who haven't seen it, the programme is the answer to the GCSE student's perennial question: "When am I ever going to use maths?" O'Briain and Marcus du Sautoy pit mathematics against trial-and-error to answer life's important questions. Such as "How do you save a drowning man?" And "What's the best way to slice pizza?"

Maths usually wins, so perhaps they can tell us how many Dave commissioning editors it takes to sign up a new series of The School of Hard Sums, quick?