New sphere-packing record stems from an unexpected source
quantamagazine.org
New sphere-packing record stems from an unexpected source
1–10 of 226 posts
Re: New sphere-packing record stems from an unexpected source
#2Very cool. Sphere packing comes up in a lot of contexts in applied problems. Looking forward to reviewing the paper.
Re: New sphere-packing record stems from an unexpected source
#3Earlier today there was an article about neanderthal's rendering fat.
The comments pointed out that anthropologist did not know that boiling was possible before the invention of pottery. Another comment pointed out that science teachers knew that it was possible because that was something they would do in class.
Final comment was about how people ReDiscover things in different fields - - like the trapezoidal rule for integration being discovered by someone studying glucose.
This is just yet another example of how bringing expertise from a different area can help.
Re: New sphere-packing record stems from an unexpected source
#4Noob question: Is the optimal sphere packing correlated with a regular lattice? I.e. that's the case for 2D,3D right? If so does this extend to ND?
Re: New sphere-packing record stems from an unexpected source
#5Earlier today there was an article about neanderthal's rendering fat. The comments pointed out that anthropologist did not know that boiling was possible before the invention of pottery. Another comment pointed out that science teachers knew that it was possible because that was something they would do in class. Final comment was about how people ReDiscover things in different fields - - like the trapezoidal rule for…
The aforementioned trapezoidal rule (Tai's method): https://diabetesjournals.org/care/article/17/2/152/17985/A-M...
Re: New sphere-packing record stems from an unexpected source
#6Noob question: Is the optimal sphere packing correlated with a regular lattice? I.e. that's the case for 2D,3D right? If so does this extend to ND?
Not necessarily—in 3d there are uncountably many non-lattice packings. They all have the same density as the FCC lattice though. To construct these packings, shift horizontal layers of FCC horizontally with respect to each other.
It is conjectured that in higher dimensions, the densest packing is always non-lattice. The rationale being that there is just not enough symmetry in such spaces.
Re: New sphere-packing record stems from an unexpected source
#7I have trouble explaining to my parents how my job is a real thing. I can only imagine trying to explain ‘I study shapes, but only ones that don’t jut inwards’.
Re: New sphere-packing record stems from an unexpected source
#8Joey Chestnut?
Re: New sphere-packing record stems from an unexpected source
#9Neat. I spent a month trying to use sphere packing approaches for a better compression algorithm (I had a large amount of vectors, they were grouped through clustering). Turned out that theoretical approaches only really work for uniform data and not any sort of real-world data.
EDIT: groped -> grouped
Re: New sphere-packing record stems from an unexpected source
#10Earlier today there was an article about neanderthal's rendering fat. The comments pointed out that anthropologist did not know that boiling was possible before the invention of pottery. Another comment pointed out that science teachers knew that it was possible because that was something they would do in class. Final comment was about how people ReDiscover things in different fields - - like the trapezoidal rule for…
I haven't read that thread, but I don't believe that anthropologists thought boiling was impossible before the invention of pottery. Here's one youtube video that demos a method for survival scenarios, I'm sure there are many others: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/0zun_UxO2vU. I know I don't have the context, but unless there are sources for the remarkable claim, it just doesn't make sense. It doesn't pass "the laugh test"