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Discovery of a new irregular pentagon that can cover the plane

theguardian.com

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Re: Discovery of a new irregular pentagon that can cover the plane

#81

Post by [deleted] »

1arity wrote: post #23
cft wrote: post #5

"That same year an unlikely mathematical pioneer entered the fray: Marjorie Rice, a San Diego housewife in her 50s, who had read about James’ discovery in Scientific American. An amateur mathematician, Rice developed her own notation and method and over the next few years discovered another four types of pentagon that tile the plane. " https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marjorie_Rice

that's awesome. Outsider math and outsider art deserve as much respect as "outsider" programming ( startups / garage hackers ) garner. Creating semi-closed communities of insiders, united by what are essentially arcane handshakes, and dismissive of value emerging outside of themselves, is really just both a narrow-mindedness that doesn't behoove innovation and also an admission of an unnecessary insecurity about the…

[deleted]

Re: Discovery of a new irregular pentagon that can cover the plane

#82

Post by 3pt14159 »

cousin_it wrote: post #55
1arity wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that's awesome. Outsider math and outsider art deserve as much respect as "outsider" programming ( startups / garage hackers ) garner. Creating semi-closed communities of insiders, united by what are essentially arcane handshakes, and dismissive of value emerging outside of themselves, is really just both a narrow-mindedness that doesn't behoove innovation and also an admission of an unnecessary insecurity about the…

IMO the analogy doesn't hold up very well. Outsider art is often very good, and outsider programming seems like a weird idea (do startup hackers have less training than BigCo employees?) But that's beside the point. If you're looking at the tiny subset of outsider science that's chosen for correctness and publication-worthiness, of course you'll be enthusiastic about it. But these people, like Marjorie Rice, aren't r…

> their proofs of FLT checked.

What does FLT stand for? Fermat's Last Theorem?

Re: Discovery of a new irregular pentagon that can cover the plane

#83

Post by sklogic »

nickysielicki wrote: post #80
sklogic wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would only have been misleading with a capitalised "Pentagon".

Well now we're arguing semantics. But okay. I think that in the context of a newspaper when you read, "Attack on the pentagon" the first thought that most people have is that there has been an attack on The Pentagon. That's the whole reason it's a pun, right? Because you're lead to believe it refers to The Pentagon when it really refers to a 5 sided polygon? That's an inappropriate thing for a newspaper to do. Go ahe…

> most people have is that there has been an attack on The Pentagon

Most people on this planet do not give a crap about some tasteless Northern American building. It is unlikely the first association with the word "pentagon" for anyone outside of the US.

Re: Discovery of a new irregular pentagon that can cover the plane

#84

Post by nickysielicki »

sklogic wrote: post #83
nickysielicki wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well now we're arguing semantics. But okay. I think that in the context of a newspaper when you read, "Attack on the pentagon" the first thought that most people have is that there has been an attack on The Pentagon. That's the whole reason it's a pun, right? Because you're lead to believe it refers to The Pentagon when it really refers to a 5 sided polygon? That's an inappropriate thing for a newspaper to do. Go ahe…

> most people have is that there has been an attack on The Pentagon Most people on this planet do not give a crap about some tasteless Northern American building. It is unlikely the first association with the word "pentagon" for anyone outside of the US.

I agree that most people don't think of The Pentagon when they hear the word "pentagon" alone. But the title says, "Attack on the pentagon". Furthermore, given that the Guardian is a UK newspaper, I would argue that most people in the UK know what The Pentagon is and associate the phrase with the building.

But let's assume I'm wrong and most readers don't know what The Pentagon is or wouldn't have associated the title with the US government building. If that's the case, then what is the point of the pun at all?

Re: Discovery of a new irregular pentagon that can cover the plane

#85

Post by [deleted] »

1arity wrote: post #23
cft wrote: post #5

"That same year an unlikely mathematical pioneer entered the fray: Marjorie Rice, a San Diego housewife in her 50s, who had read about James’ discovery in Scientific American. An amateur mathematician, Rice developed her own notation and method and over the next few years discovered another four types of pentagon that tile the plane. " https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marjorie_Rice

that's awesome. Outsider math and outsider art deserve as much respect as "outsider" programming ( startups / garage hackers ) garner. Creating semi-closed communities of insiders, united by what are essentially arcane handshakes, and dismissive of value emerging outside of themselves, is really just both a narrow-mindedness that doesn't behoove innovation and also an admission of an unnecessary insecurity about the…

[deleted]

Re: Discovery of a new irregular pentagon that can cover the plane

#86

Post by robinhouston »

est wrote: post #26

Meta question: where can I find list of simple unsolved/undiscovered problems like these in math? It does not appear in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unsolved_problems_in_m...

There's a nice collection on Math Overflow: Not especially famous, long-open problems which anyone can understand

http://mathoverflow.net/q/100265/8217

Re: Discovery of a new irregular pentagon that can cover the plane

#87

Post by sp332 »

snaily wrote: post #75
sp332 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The mobile version is very readable on a desktop browser, and it's probably easier for you to edit the URL on your PC than for the poster to edit it using their phone.

...all effort being equal. And assuming, of course, that comments are read (on average) once.

Assuming that the total effort expended by the few who really dislike the mobile interface is less than fiddling with a URL on a phone, plus gratitude toward the person for taking the effort to make the post at all.

Re: Discovery of a new irregular pentagon that can cover the plane

#88

Post by cokernel »

cft wrote: post #5

"That same year an unlikely mathematical pioneer entered the fray: Marjorie Rice, a San Diego housewife in her 50s, who had read about James’ discovery in Scientific American. An amateur mathematician, Rice developed her own notation and method and over the next few years discovered another four types of pentagon that tile the plane. " https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marjorie_Rice

She has a website for her tesselations (which that Wikipedia article links to), but unfortunately is no longer able to respond to queries: https://sites.google.com/site/intriguingtessellations/home/

There's a nice tiling of butterflies there.

Re: Discovery of a new irregular pentagon that can cover the plane

#89

Post by chillingeffect »

cLeEOGPw wrote: post #35
Someone wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's because there are only 17 wallpaper groups ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wallpaper_group ). Any _repeating_ pattern must match one of them (non-repeating patterns by definition do not)

Can you NOT link to mobile version? Mobile phones switch to mobile automatically, desktop version does not.

Why not just be a bro or cool girl and do the thing you wish others would do? I'm always so grateful when others post links through paywalls, so:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wallpaper_group

Now trip the f*ck out to some badass patterns :)

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