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How to Fold a Fitted Sheet – From a Math Guy
- wombatmobile 6y agoNo matter who you are, uf you sleep in a conventional western bed, and you don't have a full-time maid, this will change your life forever for the better.
- jfengel 6y agoThe magic step is basically "f* around and find out". The main observation is "the top part is flat, so you just fold over the corners to get them out of the way". That's easy to do for the first side, and hard to do for the second side without losing what you did. His solution is to put it on the table so you don't have to support both sides at once. There's not really any theory to the next step, just sticking your fingers in the corners and matching things up. If he wanted to talk about symmetry he could probably slip some math in there. As it is, "f* around and find out" really is how most of the progress in math and science are made, despite the after-the-fact veneer of the scientific method and presentation in journals. That's the part they always leave out in pursuit of justifying the truth of science and math, but it's really the important part. That really forms the heart of a lot of work on the philosophy of science, which flips the old model on its head. That's actually worth pondering more deeply.