Major Advances In Knot Theory 230
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."
An easy answer (Score:5, Funny)
QED (Score:2, Funny)
Loop and Swoop
Bunny Ears
Where's my Nobel
!theory (Score:5, Funny)
Re:That may be interesting to knot theorists (Score:5, Funny)
e can't be serious.
Solution already patented in 1996 ... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:How many ways are there to tie your shoelaces? (Score:1, Funny)
Re:Unless... (Score:3, Funny)
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?
does this mean? (Score:3, Funny)
Ok Great, but can this be used to..... (Score:3, Funny)
....untie the knot my cat did with the mop?
Re:That may be interesting to knot theorists (Score:2, Funny)
You wouldn't believe what just thinking about this is doing to my stomach...
Clandestine Shoelaces (Score:3, Funny)
Re:This is so very important... (Score:5, Funny)
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...
Re:The 85 Ways to Tie a Tie (Score:2, Funny)
Can There Be a Knot that Cannot Be Tied or Untied? (Score:5, Funny)
I'm just wondering. One never knows with math.
wrong theory (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Can There Be a Knot that Cannot Be Tied or Unti (Score:3, Funny)
Re:does this mean? (Score:3, Funny)
Yes, String Theory research will be replaced by Tangled Shoelace Theory - the theory that the space-time continuum is in fact a giant cosmic tangle of shoelaces, and that these shoelaces only get untangled in the presence of a large gravitational object, thus causing space-time curvature. In the presence of a massively strong gravitational object such as a black hole, these shoelaces actually break in half, with one half going into the black hole and the other half left dangling in this universe. Thus we see no light as all the shoelaces are now in a tightly tangled ball that has no connection to this universe.
Re:How many ways are there to tie your shoelaces? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:This is so very important... (Score:3, Funny)
I'm getting too old for this slashdot shit, I guess.
+ 1 insightful
Re:This is so very important... (Score:3, Funny)
wow. mathematicians make such trigger-happy moderators.
modded troll in 3, 2, 1...
Re:The hardest math (Score:4, Funny)
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.
Re:That may be interesting to knot theorists (Score:5, Funny)
but I'd hardly call it an age old question. Never heard of it.
Does that mean you're knot interested in it?
Re:This is so very important... (Score:3, Funny)
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...
Re:Things like this... (Score:4, Funny)
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.
Re:Unless... (Score:1, Funny)
experience a singularity
That sounded dirty and sad at the same time..
Re:Things like this... (Score:5, Funny)
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
Re:The hardest math (Score:3, Funny)
Re:That may be interesting to knot theorists (Score:2, Funny)
Why it's positively tied up in knots!
Just looking down at the floor ... (Score:3, Funny)
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
Re:How many ways are there to tie your shoelaces? (Score:2, Funny)
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.
Re:Unless... (Score:4, Funny)
But, mathematicians have already proved that a computer will never be able to take a mathematician's job.
Re:That may be interesting to knot theorists (Score:5, Funny)
> e can't be serious.
of course knot. e can't even round correctly. should be 2.7183. damn truncator.