3 ms·
I fear I'm responsible for this misconception. At first we didn't realise the proof had originated on 4chan – Nathaniel Johnston originally found the proof on W
by robinhouston 2y ago
I fear I'm responsible for this misconception. At first we didn't realise the proof had originated on 4chan – Nathaniel Johnston originally found the proof on Wikia, and the 4chan archive was only discovered later.
When I tweeted about it, I said “The best known lower bound for the minimal length of superpermutations was proved by an anonymous user of a wiki mainly devoted to anime.”, by which I meant Wikia (which was pretty anime-centric at the time).
I think, combined with the fact that the problem was posed to 4chan in terms of Haruhi, and because it makes a funnier story, that the anime angle has been a bit exaggerated.
Having said that, the author of the proof is not (to the best of my knowledge) a mathematician, nor does he have any apparent desire to publish his result in a conventional form, so it's still a pretty unexpected place for such a result to originate.
- throwaway37725 2y ago>At first we didn't realise the proof had originated on 4chan – Nathaniel Johnston originally found the proof on Wikia >by an anonymous user of a wiki mainly devoted to anime.”, by which I meant Wikia (which was pretty anime-centric at the time). The Wikia in question is the official 4chan /sci/ Wikia.
- robinhouston 2y agoI know. My description was aimed at people who had never heard of Wikia, and certainly didn't understand its substructure. But I realise it sounds wrong to people like you who do understand that, and I wish I'd worded it more carefully.
- nativeit 2y agoIs /sci/ on 4chan a real hub of traditional research and professional academia? I think I’d be confused by all the distinctions you anime fans are drawing here.
- 876978095789789 2y ago[dead]
- wodenokoto 2y agoRegardless, thanks for bringing this to the broader attention of the world!