4 ms·
> “I’d bet a beer that you can square the circle, provably, with less than 20 pieces,” he said. “But I wouldn’t bet $1,000.” This is the kind of math that I lo
by mabbo 5y ago
> “I’d bet a beer that you can square the circle, provably, with less than 20 pieces,” he said. “But I wouldn’t bet $1,000.”
This is the kind of math that I love because when the results get better they get more appealing to the less-math-savvy masses. The decomposition of a square into those pieces will quickly become a puzzle you give to children and they think it's hard but everyone has seen it before.
- mlyle 5y agoHere, the pieces are fractal holy messes-- not something you can make a puzzle out of. (On the other hand, it is trivial to cheat with small gaps, etc, and make such a puzzle).
- SamBam 5y agoI think the gif at the top is an approximation of what that result would look like -- cutting the square into just 6 "pieces" to make a circle. But it's absolutely not something that can be cut up and given to children.
- riidom 5y agoIt also couldn't be farer away from how I imagined the solution would like. Not that I had anything non-vague in mind, I'm mostly just an interested layman, but surely not anything like that gif! Truely amazing. Also I can't even start to get my head behind "Yes there are shapes but they are hard to visualize" so how do they even work with them? Or "We have a gap left, of zero area". This is not a gap in my book, but you are the experts :) Math at its best.