Anime fans stumbled upon a mathematical proof

I have, for a long time, dismissed Scientific American as a pointless work of marketing. This article, on the other hand, makes me think I may be missing some things. The problem is stated in an interesting way that might be broadly understood and enjoyed. It gives some results that are explained well and easily understood. It also leaves some open questions that can be explored, letting the explorer dream about settling some famous open problem. The perfect sort of thing for high school math (and an old guy killing some time).

Thank you Manon Bischoff (author), Daisy Yuhas (editor), and Scientific American for giving me this to think about.

Re: Anime fans stumbled upon a mathematical proof

#5

Post by tombert » Thu, Mar 06, 2025, 5:01 PM UTC

There's something unbelievably funny to me that actual mathematical papers have to cite a 4chan post.

It does make me wonder how much hidden knowledge is hidden in parts of the internet; maybe this is the only genius mathematical thing we've found on 4chan...

Re: Anime fans stumbled upon a mathematical proof

#6

Post by Modified3019 » Thu, Mar 06, 2025, 5:10 PM UTC

Non-paywall link: https://archive.is/i140b

Re: Anime fans stumbled upon a mathematical proof

#7

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Mar 06, 2025, 5:13 PM UTC

tocs3 wrote: post #4

I have, for a long time, dismissed Scientific American as a pointless work of marketing. This article, on the other hand, makes me think I may be missing some things. The problem is stated in an interesting way that might be broadly understood and enjoyed. It gives some results that are explained well and easily understood. It also leaves some open questions that can be explored, letting the explorer dream about sett…

[deleted]

Re: Anime fans stumbled upon a mathematical proof

#8

Post by tombert » Thu, Mar 06, 2025, 5:15 PM UTC

tocs3 wrote: post #4

I have, for a long time, dismissed Scientific American as a pointless work of marketing. This article, on the other hand, makes me think I may be missing some things. The problem is stated in an interesting way that might be broadly understood and enjoyed. It gives some results that are explained well and easily understood. It also leaves some open questions that can be explored, letting the explorer dream about sett…

I've never really done it at any advanced level, but I think good "science communication for the masses" is just a really hard problem. I say that because it seems like there's an overwhelming amount of really bad science communication out there.

You have creators like Veratasium on YouTube, who I think do really great jobs making a lot of science and mathematical topics interesting to nearly everyone, but there's also a lot of articles that are either very boring, incorrect, overpromising, or some combination of the three.

Re: Anime fans stumbled upon a mathematical proof

#9

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Mar 06, 2025, 5:18 PM UTC

[deleted]

Re: Anime fans stumbled upon a mathematical proof

#10

Post by bloomingkales » Thu, Mar 06, 2025, 5:20 PM UTC

tombert wrote: post #5

There's something unbelievably funny to me that actual mathematical papers have to cite a 4chan post. It does make me wonder how much hidden knowledge is hidden in parts of the internet; maybe this is the only genius mathematical thing we've found on 4chan...

If you were to ask an LLM trained on just scientific data to solve this problem, it would either solve it really quickly because it has seemingly irrelevant 4chan data or it would not solve it at all. It's a argument against non-general LLMs, and very low-key shout out to liberal arts degrees.