· String Theory Ping List ·
· Join · Bookmark · Topics · Google ·
· View or Post in 'blog · post a topic · subscribe ·
Posted on 10/30/2018 6:55:18 PM PDT by Eddie01
You may not have heard of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, but, among anime fans at least, it’s a pretty big deal. Originally a series of light novels, it follows the adventures of typical high schooler Kyon and the time-travel alien ESP club he is forced to help create by his beautiful if eccentric friend, the titular Haruhi. Since its original run in 2003, it has spawned 10 additional volumes, a film adaptation, several video games, and even its own religion, Haruhiism.
It was first adapted into an anime back in 2006. The show only lasted three months but there was a twist: it was aired in nonlinear order. When the DVD was released, it had been reordered again. And, in a show featuring time travel, philosophical paradoxes, and paranormal phenomena, neither were necessarily the definitive order to watch the series.
Which led to a problem: What is the quickest way to watch the series in every possible order?
A few years ago, one anonymous 4chan poster set out to solve this puzzle. The person claimed to have worked out a lower bound for the answer – watch fewer episodes than that, and you’ve no hope of seeing the series in every order.
Crucially, they offered a proof – and, in doing so, they provided the world with an answer to a problem that had eluded mathematicians for a quarter of a century.
In mathematical terms, the Haruhi problem, as it’s become known, asks the following: What is the shortest possible length of a superpermutation of n elements?
Given a set – a collection of things, or elements, like “natural numbers less than 4” or “colors on the US flag” – a permutation basically means some order those things can be listed in. So one permutation of “natural numbers less than 4” is 123. Another is 312.
A superpermutation, however, is a string containing every possible permutation of a set. One superpermutation of natural numbers less than 4 is 123121321, as it contains each of the six possible orderings of the numbers 1, 2, and 3.
There are six possible permutations of three elements. This superpermutation contains them all. That’s fine for small sets, but the lengths of these superpermutations can get really big, really fast. In fact, by the time you have five numbers in your set, the shortest superpermutation possible is already 153 characters long. So instead of finding superpermutations by trial and error, mathematicians wanted to find a general rule: a formula they could use to find the minimum length of a superpermutation of any number of elements.
Back in 1993, a couple of mathematicians thought they’d done just that, but their conjecture was shown to be false for sets with more than five elements in 2014, and the problem was reopened. Then last week, mathematician Robin Houston stumbled upon the anonymous proof on the Haruhi message board – and excited researchers gathered online for an impromptu peer review.
A curious situation. The best known lower bound for the minimal length of superpermutations was proved by an anonymous user of a wiki mainly devoted to anime. https://t.co/z3wVAcUJl1
— Robin Houston (@robinhouston) October 23, 2018 The verdict? The proof checks out, and “Anonymous 4chan Poster” is now a listed co-author on a new combinatorics paper presenting the result.
And thanks to a recent proof showing an upper bound to the problem, it looks like this 25-year-old math problem may be on track to be solved once and for all.
“It might be possible to crack the thing completely open,” Houston told The Verge.
So should we expect the anonymous 4channer to come forward? Possibly not any time soon – according to their proof, they still have nearly 4.3 million years' worth of Haruhi left to watch before they have time to enjoy their new mathematical fame.
LOL. Earlier today I heard someone on National Progressive Radio refer to 4chan as a ‘pro trump site.’ 4chan.org has been around since Feb 14, 2004.
I loved The Melancholy, and yes, I am something of a wannabe Anime weeb. Some amazing stories.
4chan is pro Trump partially because us autists recognize one of our own. Trump is very high functioning but he is definitely on the spectrum.
It has pro trump members indeed, but it wasn’t created as the npr piece seemed to imply, to be developed as a ‘pro trump’ site.
I think an erstwhile TimeLord is bored and is hanging out on 4chan.
CC
I don’t know WTF anyone here is talking about...but I do know that the answer is 42.
bfl
I don’t know WTF anyone here is talking about...but I do know that the answer is 42.
-
LOL. I guess you have to be a certain age to get that!
I’ve been on 4Chan since 2008.
I was only there because there was a “crazy” Dragonball forum and I’m a super fan of it. That’s where it started. 4Chan only geared to the right AFTER obama got elected in 08 and I later got hooked on non-anime stuff like politics. Better than Reddit on most times because they really get into it.
Remember the time when Shia Lebouf tried to hide his stupid flag? In real time, I saw it unfold in 3 days where one user PM’d me where the nearest airport was after LAX, and he was triangulating the flight paths.
Same here. I’m an otaku myself LOL and most of my GF’s got into it. However, i draw the line with this costume crap at A/X and I’ve been there probably 3 of the last 6 years because i have dealings with Funimation.
Ive been seriously thinking of making my own anime and manga threads because you’re not the only anime Freeper . There’s a lot here..
The answer is “1.” Unless Schrödinger’s cat is in the vicinity, then the answer is “2.”
5.56mm
Count me in if you do!
Ok, if I do, you’re on the Ping list. I may come back to making the UPOTTE manga thread about girls turning into guns (AK 47, AR ETC) and vice versa XD
Very good article.
Fun read.
In National Treasure, Reilly is given a random sequence of letters, enters them in sequence, then runs an algorithm to determine rational options based on recognized words and separated multiple recognized words.
This is the Kernel.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.