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In your experience, does the act of solving a Rubik’s cube have any practical application to another discipline?

TheDong 3y ago
I will list all the cross-applications I have found for Rubik's cube solving to other disciplines, ordered from most to least useful: 1. It has an application to the discipline of waiting. This is easily it's most powerful application. 2. It has applications to group theory, and having a good intuitive understanding of rubik's cubes really does help with some groups and permutations. It also imparts some other small amount of math-related intuition. 3. It has applications in being able to connect with other cubers, which can every once in a while open doors. It's rare, but sometimes you'll meet someone, and cubing will be a part of how you connect, resulting to a good social outcome. It has applications, in that way, to the discipline of socializing 4. It has applications in being able to appear smart to some small subset of people (akin to wearing glasses, reading a book, and other small signifiers). "Appearing smart" is usually not a very useful discipline, but at times it is. 5. It has significant applications to the art of getting bullied. 6. It can greatly benefit one in their discipline of "being annoying". Cube loudly for greatest effect.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- spencerchubb 3y ago
  As a speedcuber who has solved a Rubik's Cube in 5 seconds, this is highly accurate
reikonomusha 3y ago
The problem of solving a Rubik's Cube is an instance of a more general problem called "factorization": Given a permutation group G which is generated by permutations g_1, ..., g_k, written: G = <g_1, ..., g_k> we seek to represent an element s in G as a short word over the generating set. That is, we want to write s = g_a * g_b * g_c * ... for some (a, b, c, ...) we must discover. In Rubik's Cube speak, that's taking a scramble and finding a short sequence of moves that solves (or equally, reconstructs) that scramble. A lot of problems can be framed as problems in finite group theory, especially in quantum physics and quantum information theory. For instance, to characterize the performance of a quantum computer, we might run a routine that executes a long sequence of so-called unitary operations from a special group called the Clifford group. But in order to run the characterization routine, we must be able to express their product of the sequence as a short word of generators—a problem identical to the Rubik's Cube solving problem. So the Rubik's Cube gives us tremendous insight into what kinds of methods may or may not work in practice, since it's a non-trivial group that's large but tractable, abstract but realizable as a plastic toy. That's all for exploring solutions mathematically and/or computationally. As for learning to solve a Rubik's Cube by hand? Not sure it's practical for very much, but it is pretty cool.
- mathgenius 3y ago
  Yeah, this is actually a great way to explain the gate synthesis problem in a quantum computer, it's like solving a high dimensional rubik's cube !

I will list all the cross-applications I have found for Rubik's cube solving to other disciplines, ordered from most to least useful: 1. It has an application to the discipline of waiting. This is easily it's most powerful application. 2. It has applications to group theory, and having a good intuitive understanding of rubik's cubes really does help with some groups and permutations. It also imparts some other small amount of math-related intuition. 3. It has applications in being able to connect with other cubers, which can every once in a while open doors. It's rare, but sometimes you'll meet someone, and cubing will be a part of how you connect, resulting to a good social outcome. It has applications, in that way, to the discipline of socializing 4. It has applications in being able to appear smart to some small subset of people (akin to wearing glasses, reading a book, and other small signifiers). "Appearing smart" is usually not a very useful discipline, but at times it is. 5. It has significant applications to the art of getting bullied. 6. It can greatly benefit one in their discipline of "being annoying". Cube loudly for greatest effect.

deleted 3y ago
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spencerchubb 3y ago
As a speedcuber who has solved a Rubik's Cube in 5 seconds, this is highly accurate

reikonomusha 3y ago

The problem of solving a Rubik's Cube is an instance of a more general problem called "factorization": Given a permutation group G which is generated by permutations g_1, ..., g_k, written: G = <g_1, ..., g_k> we seek to represent an element s in G as a short word over the generating set. That is, we want to write s = g_a * g_b * g_c * ... for some (a, b, c, ...) we must discover. In Rubik's Cube speak, that's taking a scramble and finding a short sequence of moves that solves (or equally, reconstructs) that scramble. A lot of problems can be framed as problems in finite group theory, especially in quantum physics and quantum information theory. For instance, to characterize the performance of a quantum computer, we might run a routine that executes a long sequence of so-called unitary operations from a special group called the Clifford group. But in order to run the characterization routine, we must be able to express their product of the sequence as a short word of generators—a problem identical to the Rubik's Cube solving problem. So the Rubik's Cube gives us tremendous insight into what kinds of methods may or may not work in practice, since it's a non-trivial group that's large but tractable, abstract but realizable as a plastic toy. That's all for exploring solutions mathematically and/or computationally. As for learning to solve a Rubik's Cube by hand? Not sure it's practical for very much, but it is pretty cool.

mathgenius 3y ago
Yeah, this is actually a great way to explain the gate synthesis problem in a quantum computer, it's like solving a high dimensional rubik's cube !