I believe this is the quote you're referring to, by Erik Demaine on 6.006: "I use BFS a lot, myself, to check mathematical conjectures. [...] You think somethi

I believe this is the quote you're referring to, by Erik Demaine on 6.006: "I use BFS a lot, myself, to check mathematical conjectures. [...] You think something is true, you can imagine some graph of all possible inputs to that theorem and you'd need to check them. Typical way of doing that is BFS through that entire graph of states. Usually we're testing finite special cases of a general conjecture, but if we find a counterexample, we're done, don't have to work on it anymore. If we don't find a counterexample then we have to do the mathematics." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-CYnVz-uh4&t=8m51s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-CYnVz-uh4&t=8m51s