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Major Advances In Knot Theory
An anonymous reader sends us to Science News, which is running a survey of recent strides in finding an answer to the age-old question: How many ways are there to tie your shoelaces? "Mathematicians have been puzzling over that question for a century or two, and the main thing they've discovered is that the question is really, really hard. In the last decade, though, they've developed some powerful new tools inspired by physics that have pried a few answers from the universe's clutches. Even more exciting is that the new tools seem to be the tip of a much larger theory that mathematicians are just beginning to uncover. That larger mathematical theory, if it exists, may help crack some of the hardest mathematical questions there are, questions about the mathematical structure of the three- and four-dimensional space where we live. ... Revealing the full ... superstructure may be the work of a generation."
How many ways are there to tie your shoelaces? The answer is very easy ... knot.
If enithin kan gow rong it whil. (Murfey)
Loop and Swoop
Bunny Ears
Where's my Nobel
So, can we abbreviate this "knot theory" to "!theory"?
Anybody want my mod points?
e can't be serious.
Oh, yeah, it's not easy to pad these out to 120 characters.
... and relies on the cunning use of a rabbit, tree, and hole to tie shoelaces.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
And there goes another perfectly good universe down the tubes.
MSIE: The world's most standards-complaint web browser.
Yes, if we discover hard AI and experience a singularity then mathematicians will be obsolete. Of course, so will the rest of us. I'm still going in to work on Monday. How about you?
the inventor of the shoe lace could be the answer to all our four dimensional space quetions?
....untie the knot my cat did with the mop?
You wouldn't believe what just thinking about this is doing to my stomach...
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
This just in: Physicists have just now revealed that String Theory has nothing to do with the fabric of our universe, and everything to do with teaching toddlers how to tie their shoes.
Let me introduce you to ^W.
It's a great tool for those writing pseudo-ironic posts who are, at the same time, concerned with the preservation of the valuable resource of ones and zeroes...
I smell hormones! Someone's headed to the Youtube comments.
I'm just wondering. One never knows with math.
I prefer the "velcro" theory.
It's all history, man. -anon
Im more worried about the knots that can be tied but not untied. My shoes are about to get the Alexander's universal knot solution.
Its actually 84. You forgot that you can always double-knot each of them too.
jsut athnoer menagiensls ltitle psrhae for you to dcoede. Why do we wtsae our tmie dnoig tihs?
I'm getting too old for this slashdot shit, I guess.
+ 1 insightful
wow. mathematicians make such trigger-happy moderators.
modded troll in 3, 2, 1...
Requiem for the American Dream
How is that hard? He just has to go through his address book, ask each person what they do and every time one says "mathemetician" he adds 1.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
but I'd hardly call it an age old question. Never heard of it.
Does that mean you're knot interested in it?
This whole "the human race is incapable of doing two things at once" BS never ceases to amaze me. How do you even get out of bed in the morning? Make coffee... take a crap... which to do first? Gaah! I'm paralyzed! Which is the most important fish to fry?
Er... are you saying there's a way to take a crap and make coffee at the same time? I'm curious, but at the same time I don't think I want to know...
When I read things such as this I like to take a moment to let the dumbfounded feeling wash over me.
This is just not that important.
You only say that because you have yet to be involved in a serious shoe-tying accident.
experience a singularity
That sounded dirty and sad at the same time..
Back when I was going to school for my Elementary School diploma, I was force-fed a lot of arithmetic.
Roughly twice as much as was typical, because my disinterest (and the resultant lack of success) required me to take almost every grade twice.
No sooner was I free of school than I brain-dumped every single addition, multiplication, subtraction, division, counting... the lot of it. Good riddance to bad rubbish.
And then, some time later, I was trying to make my paycheck go farther. The problem was optimising the spending for maximum personal happiness, and to that end, I had collected all of my receipts so that I could record where I was spending my money during the month.
Pretty soon, I had tons of data indicating where my money was going. Pretty numbers, but aside from a few expensive items, pretty useless.
Until I started thinking about what I could do with a set of numbers.
That's right - my old arch-nemesis, arithmetic, suddenly proved useful. Summing the money spent in different categories gave me totals, and suddenly I knew EXACTLY where my money was going in an actual month. Given that I had measured how much money was spent on each purchase (that's how receipts work) I could now properly budget my spending.
That resulted in a HUGE leap forward in my quality of life.
Don't dis abstract math - you never know when it'll pay off.
AC
But because he doesn't think mathematical theory is important, he'll talk to a few dozen people and he'll have "11111".
Why it's positively tied up in knots!
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
But I digress. If some mathematician can come over with a theory, and sort this mess of knots out, I'm buying the beer.
And pizza
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
how the fuck is 42 insightful? its funny when you read it in that book, but seeing it here again and again is not even funny any more, let alone insightful
Someone's forgotten where their towel is.
But, mathematicians have already proved that a computer will never be able to take a mathematician's job.
> e can't be serious.
of course knot. e can't even round correctly. should be 2.7183. damn truncator.