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Anime fans stumbled upon a mathematical proof
- throwaway81523 2y ago"Permutate"?
- userbinator 2y agoThe opposite linguistic construction to an indention.
- layer8 2y agoPrevious discussions: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18292061 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18292061 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23968618 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23968618 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39325146 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39325146 See also: https://mathsci.fandom.com/wiki/The_Haruhi_Problem https://mathsci.fandom.com/wiki/The_Haruhi_Problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superpermutation#Lower_bounds,_or_the_Haruhi_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superpermutation#Lower_bounds,...
- Izkata 2y agoThe image in the upper-right of the Fandom link was how it was posted in the 4chan thread, little disappointing it's left out of most posts about it. The character is actually from Steins;Gate, not The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya: https://steins-gate.fandom.com/wiki/Kurisu_Makise https://steins-gate.fandom.com/wiki/Kurisu_Makise
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- Hamuko 2y agoKurisu in front of a whiteboard with "You should be able to solve this" is a fairly famous post format. https://www.google.com/search?udm=2&q=%22You%20should%20be%20able%20to%20solve%20this%22 https://www.google.com/search?udm=2&q=%22You%20should%20be%2...
- dang 2y agoWow I had no idea. Thanks! Macroexpanded: Unscrambling the hidden secrets of superpermutations - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39325146 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39325146 - Feb 2024 (8 comments) Mystery math whiz and novelist advance permutation problem - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36191831 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36191831 - June 2023 (92 comments) An Anonymous 4chan Post Helped Solve a 25-Year-Old Math Puzzle (2018) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23968618 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23968618 - July 2020 (7 comments) Nobody knows how to cite 4chan mathematicians who solved an interesting problem - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18292061 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18292061 - Oct 2018 (198 comments) If anyone can find other threads in this set, let me know and I'll add them here.
- nazgulsenpai 2y agoIt could have been a mathematician , you never know with that Anon guy.
- hiccuphippo 2y agoIf they were mathematicians, they would have published it, no?
- groby_b 2y agoMaybe. Writing a publication is a lot more work than a post on 4chan, even if it's a good post. If it's not your field you might well not bother to write the paper. (After all, it's not your field, somebody might have solved it since it didn't seem that hard, and do you really want to do an exhaustive literature research for a fun puzzle you worked out?)
- Barrin92 2y agoA chess club I played at was frequented by a guy who used to work as mathematician but got fed up by it at some point and started to work as a chess trainer. Still did maths and blogged regularly but never bothered to publish academic work. There's a lot of people like that in maths. Very talented but dropping in and out of it or doing it recreationally.
- rincebrain 2y agoI think Grigori Perelman, who solved the Poincare conjecture and declined the Fields medal and Millennium prize money for it, then said he has retired from professional mathematics to avoid the fame, might qualify as the most famous in recent memory.
- forgotpwd16 2y agoInterestingly, his seminal papers on (alongside other major contributions) solving the Poincaré conjecture weren't published in a journal but were simply uploaded on arXiv. Moreover, similar to GP's mathematician may say, Grigori quit professional mathematics not just to avoid fame but also due to disappointment over the field ethics.
- tocs3 2y agoI have, for a long time, dismissed Scientific American as a pointless work of marketing. This article, on the other hand, makes me think I may be missing some things. The problem is stated in an interesting way that might be broadly understood and enjoyed. It gives some results that are explained well and easily understood. It also leaves some open questions that can be explored, letting the explorer dream about settling some famous open problem. The perfect sort of thing for high school math (and an old guy killing some time). Thank you Manon Bischoff (author), Daisy Yuhas (editor), and Scientific American for giving me this to think about.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- tombert 2y agoI've never really done it at any advanced level, but I think good "science communication for the masses" is just a really hard problem. I say that because it seems like there's an overwhelming amount of really bad science communication out there. You have creators like Veratasium on YouTube, who I think do really great jobs making a lot of science and mathematical topics interesting to nearly everyone, but there's also a lot of articles that are either very boring, incorrect, overpromising, or some combination of the three.
- dylan604 2y agoMy main issue is when the author assumes the reader knows much more about a topic and just glosses over salient details on that assumption. It's not necessarily intentional by the author, and is more of an editorial problem. When you're speaking with someone or a group, you can see the looks on people's faces if you're losing them, or they interrupt asking for more details. In a written piece, that is not possible and a target base level needs to be set with details for that level to follow along. It's up to the editor to go back to the author for that information if things are being glossed over.
- ziddoap 2y ago
- tombert 2y agoThere's something unbelievably funny to me that actual mathematical papers have to cite a 4chan post. It does make me wonder how much hidden knowledge is hidden in parts of the internet; maybe this is the only genius mathematical thing we've found on 4chan...
- bloomingkales 2y agoIf you were to ask an LLM trained on just scientific data to solve this problem, it would either solve it really quickly because it has seemingly irrelevant 4chan data or it would not solve it at all. It's a argument against non-general LLMs, and very low-key shout out to liberal arts degrees.
- throw9348491 2y ago[flagged]
- tombert 2y ago> Why it would be something extra ordinary? You give screenshot, date... Journalists do it all the time: "evil X are attacking Y while doing Z". It's just funny. I usually associate 4chan as primarily shitposting. Memes and offensive-stuff-for-the-sake-of-being-offensive and porn. You don't generally see mathematical work being done on there.
- throw9348491 2y agoI used 4chan for cooking and dietary stuff. It was a huge site, something like reddit. Math stuff was very strong there, I think you just never visited this site!
- tombert 2y agoI have visited the site, but mostly just hung around in /b/. I didn't really check out any of the other forums on there. I could be wrong, but I think that the average non-active-4chan-user associates 4chan primarily with /b/.
- Modified3019 2y agoNon-paywall link: https://archive.is/i140b https://archive.is/i140b
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- _trampeltier 2y agoShould not the de Bruijn sequence work somehow for this problem? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Bruijn_sequence https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Bruijn_sequence
- ball_of_lint 2y agoThat would give you some string that contains all the permutations, but definitely not the shortest such string.
- AdmiralAsshat 2y agoLoath as I am to give 4chan credit for anything positive, I feel like the article subject is slightly dismissive with its use of the phrase "stumbled upon." The anonymous 4chan user clearly did the work, it's not as though they came upon a proof written in the sand. For all we know it was a grad student with an ABD in Statistics who just happened to like anime. But the phrasing almost implies it's not a true accomplishment because "scientists" didn't discover it.
- asddubs 2y agoi took it to mean that they stumbled upon it in the sense that they didn't try to make a novel contribution to the field of mathematics or think they were doing that, but just solving a specific problem
- AdmiralAsshat 2y agoI suppose in my head, when the phrase "stumbled upon" is used, it would imply that someone was solving a problem that they weren't intending to solve, or via a method that they weren't intending. A hypothetical headline might be "Food scientist stumbles upon cure for cancer while refining process for fish oil": the scientist wasn't trying to solve the problem of cancer, they were trying to solve the problem of extending fish oil shelf-life, and incidentally found the former. But you would find it strange if the article said, "Oncologist stumbles upon cure for cancer while testing new colon cancer treatment." Because in that case, the scientist is seemingly doing what he set out to do--it was not unintentional. It seems like the 4chan poster knew enough about mathematics to recognize the stated problem as a mathematical problem and write a proof for it. That already demonstrates a degree of specialty and intention that makes "stumble upon" seem dismissive, to me. The fact that they didn't know they were solving a a more general, already-known problem is irrelevant, IMO. It would almost be like denying them credit because they didn't fill out the paperwork correctly.
- Arnavion 2y ago"Stumbled upon" is used for mathematicians discovering something by working it out all the time.
- votiv 2y ago@gwern was it you?
- curtisszmania 2y ago[dead]
- rootsudo 2y agoWoah, Haruhi is now considered classic.
- trothamel 2y agoThe anime will be 19 years old next month, so it's probably not wrong to consider it such.
- ziddoap 2y agoIt reinforces that I'm getting old, though.
- t-3 2y agoCalling Haruhi classic isn't that bad - I've seen people on this site referring to 2010s-era hardware as "retro".
- GolDDranks 2y agoIt was a huge hit, and those tend to turn into classics with age. Gotta admit that it's making me feel old.
- bntyhntr 2y agoAt one of my old jobs, the bathroom was locked with a 4 digit code followed by the key symbol. We jokingly made up "Bathroom Code" as an interview question/to nerd snipe each other instead of working, which was "assuming you don't have to press key, and that the bathroom door will unlock if the correct 4 digits are entered in order at any time, write the code to print the shortest possible test sequence to guarantee you entry". Obviously we didn't give this to any candidates but it's amusing to think that the problem is a lot more interesting than we gave it credit for.
- OscarCunningham 2y agoIf the code is allowed repeats then the problem is much easier: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Bruijn_sequence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Bruijn_sequence.
- Out_of_Characte 2y agoSuperpermutation must repeat all possible combination in the shortest number possible. De Bruijn sequence places a lower bound on the length of superpermutations but shorter sequences are possible. De bruijn is also cyclical, which superpermutations in the literature are not.
- slazaro 2y agoGiven that you just care about 4 digit codes (so you don't actually care about a generic algorithm that's not super slow in asymptotic time), can't you just solve it with an easy to code bruteforce algorithm? Or is the combinatorial explosion so big that it's actually intractable that way?
- dumbfounder 2y agoThink about this. You need to calculate the number of permutation for 4 digit codes. Then you need to arrange them in every order possible to brute force. So that’s 4!!. That’s a lot: roughly 620000000000000000000000 combos.
- evanmoran 2y agoThis is always how it works. Large fan bases are filled with extremely capable people with vastly different specialties so I have no doubt this 4chan user had a very strong math background and just couldn't resist solving it for real.
- trothamel 2y agoOddly, the image that Scientific American chose to illustrate their article isn't from any of the Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya projects, but from Aokana - Four Rhythms Across the Blue, a much more obscure title.
- Frotag 2y agoNot to mention they occupy totally different mediums (anime vs visual novel). Kind of like using a random movie cover when you're talking about a music album.
- windward 2y agoBoth have anime adaptations, neither are anime original.
- endless8 2y agoThey also close with an example for Harui's show and earlier try to explain its premise too... Completely ignoring the fact that fans don't care to watch the whole show in any order, but only the "Endless 8", the 8 episodes actually stuck in a time loop. And even making an example out of 8 episodes would be stupid, as the 8th episode in the Endless is meant to be the very final piece of the loop. It's arguable for the very first, you could in theory watch it out of order too, but it has the most setup of the bunch. So they only cared for the superpermutation of 6. Critically abysmal research on the article's part.
- prophesi 2y agoTrue to an extent; there's the broadcast order versus the actual chronological order versus the source material order that all differ a good bit[0]. Broadcast order being the main outlier. It's an episodic series, with some that span more than one episode, along with Endless Eight. If anything, I'd say the permutations should be separated out by the first season and the endless eight it encompasses, as there's no sense in watching an endless eight episode in the midst of the rest. [0] https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1JWY_VFaF_NAxlmPkYsOAZdWrLLGykBTRHQNz4d8w-Uw/edit?gid=0#gid=0 https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1JWY_VFaF_NAxlmPkYsOA...
- lqet 2y agoI am not surprised that the author of this great article is Manon Bischoff. I have been reading her articles on Spektrum.de for years now, and they are always excellent. Here is a list of all her articles: https://www.spektrum.de/profil/bischoff/manon/1486871 https://www.spektrum.de/profil/bischoff/manon/1486871 Selected articles get translated and published by SciAm: https://www.scientificamerican.com/author/manon-bischoff/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/author/manon-bischoff/
- cloudbonsai 2y agoI am more surpised that the other amateur mathematian appearing in this article is Greg Egan (He has a personal website on https://www.gregegan.net/ https://www.gregegan.net/). He is one of the best contemporary hard SF writers in the world.
- perching_aix 2y ago2011 in the title would have been nice. Of course it's the Haruhi problem.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- asqueella 2y agoSurprisingly there’s no explanation here or in the TFA of what the problem actually is: https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/s/2nHDIOfnBX https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/s/2nHDIOfnBX
- SamBam 2y agoFrom TFA: > If you want to watch a series in multiple arrangements—perhaps to figure out which sequence of episodes makes the most sense—you need a superpermutation. This is a sequence of all possible permutations. Imagine a marathon showing where you watch the first episode, followed by the second, and then watch the second episode, followed by the first (1-2-2-1). To avoid watching the second episode twice in a row, a shorter superpermutation would be 1-2-1; you would only have to watch three episodes to still have every possible order covered. > Mathematicians have also calculated the shortest superpermutations for a series consisting of n = 4 and n = 5 episodes (33 and 153 episodes, respectively). Beyond that, however, they are in the dark. The shortest superpermutations for n > 5 are not known.
- layman51 2y agoIt is funny that the article linked is from this month, but the actual anonymous post seems to be from 2011, and it looks like the research paper itself is from 2018.
- fastball 2y agoYeah, this has been fairly well-covered in the past, not sure why they decided to re-hash now.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- robswc 2y agoYea, that absolutely checks out. Being able to apply your work to something you enjoy is a discipline and motivation multiplier.
- appleaday1 2y agoThis was done by 4chan.
- photonthug 2y agoNow with our new understandings of super permutations, perhaps David Lynch’s rabbits can finally make sense.
- amelius 2y ago[flagged]
- dsffsad 2y ago[flagged]
- wut-wut 2y agoMissed an opportunity to mention she was a god and the episodes were already out of order.
- not2b 2y agoI was impressed with how tight the known bounds are. For length 30, the upper bound is 1.0000397 times the lower bound. For 40 the ratio is 1.0000164 and it quickly approaches 1.
- ErigmolCt 2y agoMakes me wonder if a full solution is just around the corner or if there's some sneaky mathematical trick still waiting to be discovered
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- ErigmolCt 2y agoThis is honestly one of the coolest "internet accidentally advances math" stories I've seen
- wodenokoto 2y agoClicking around the previous discussions, it appears that the original question was posted on /sci/, a science and math board on 4chan, and not an anime board, as everybody who writes about this states. This is apparently an archive of the original post: http://4watch.org/superstring/ http://4watch.org/superstring/ It's a question to a math community, using an anime meme template and referencing another anime. The discussion is very much not some anime fans having fun with a silly question, not knowing they are dealing with frontiers of math. Instead it is math enthusiast having a go at what they know is a difficult problem. One even links to a stackexchange question, stating that this is an open problem, and the poster of the link says that if they solve it, they should post it to arxiv.
- VVilhelmsen 2y agoIndeed. I would even dare to say most of /sci/ don't want to be associated with anime at all.
- swarnie 2y agoUnlike sites like Reddit where an overarching hivemind will dominate the entire site to the point where your cooking, gardening and Reality TV subs will all contain American politics for some ungodly reason, 4chan still seems to be siloed in to specifically focused communities. Ignore /b/, /pol/, r9k and all the weeb stuff and you can find some properly good communities which remind me of the old internet. /sci/, /mu/, /biz/ and /fit/ can all have their moments from time to time.
- lmpdev 2y agoSome of the content that pops up on /t/ are extremely interesting from a data hoarding/lost media perspective I vaguely remember a poster having digitised his entire niche Serbian breakfast cartoon collection A lot falls through the rather wide cracks in legal distribution methods
- ChrisRR 2y ago> Ignore the weeb stuff Good luck doing that on 4chan
- wodenokoto 2y agoSlightly offtopic: Has anyone tried watching Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya in a random order? Does it tell a story with a beginning and an end? Or is it more like season 1 of the Simpsons, which you could also watch in any order you want.
- junon 2y ago> The researchers posted their mathematical work to the Online Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences that same month, and the first author is listed as “Anonymous 4chan Poster.” I love the internet.
- a1o 2y agoAny recommendations on how to write stories where the chapters could be read in any other? I am curious how such thing could work.
- dealbreaker 2y agoI haven't seen any Haruhi references in about as much time yeah, it was insanely popular back in the day. Haruhi, 4chan, been a while.
- lupire 2y agoMisleading rehash of (2011-2018) story.
- 1oooqooq 2y agoisn't this solved even on ancient east asian texts? and several other times on recent history? i even found this much more interesting use searching for the name of the proofs https://hackaday.com/tag/ford-securicode/ https://hackaday.com/tag/ford-securicode/
- phkahler 2y agoI played around with a related problem - find the shortest string containing every binary number of length n. There are 2^n substrings, and I seem to recall being able to to do it in 2^n + n - 1 bits. In other words, perfect overlap was possible at least up to n=10. I was interested in this because it's an optimal way to plot Julia sets by running the iteration backward and choosing one or the other square root. To visit all parts of the outline you'd want to apply every sequence of root selection (positive or negative) up to some length. Doing it at random is cool, but for a fixed number of points you want one of these sequences.