[HN Gopher] Maze proof establishes a 'backbone' for statistical ...
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Maze proof establishes a 'backbone' for statistical mechanics
        
       Author : nsoonhui
       Score  : 24 points
       Date   : 2024-02-09 06:13 UTC (1 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.quantamagazine.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.quantamagazine.org)
        
       | onos wrote:
       | Curious how typical "kids" mazes are made. They've got to be
       | tough to see through to the end and usually cover much of the
       | sheet. Similarly intrigued by the construction of cross word
       | puzzles...
        
         | analog31 wrote:
         | Anecdote: I learned BASIC in 1981, and one of my first programs
         | generated mazes. I tested it a couple times on smaller grids,
         | then submitted a job to fill an entire sheet of green bar
         | paper. Next morning, I asked the operator for my printout, and
         | got chewed out because they killed my job after it had consumed
         | some insane amount of core time.
         | 
         | That was my first lesson in complexity. My program was
         | something like O(N^3) or worse.
         | 
         | But I've read that good crossword puzzles are as much of a
         | literary exercise as a computational one.
        
       | timdellinger wrote:
       | Nice work!
       | 
       | I usually like the writing at Quanta, but omg just put "this is
       | percolation theory on a hexagonal grid" in the first paragraph.
        
         | dmwood wrote:
         | Amen. For those interested, google 'percolation theory in two
         | dimensions' to see general results.
        
       | alwa wrote:
       | I always marvel at Quanta's skill in trying to translate these
       | intricate mathematical and physical ideas for a broad audience. I
       | can't always wrap my mind around their analogies, but I always
       | admire their effort.
       | 
       | Their visualizations seemed especially helpful here. I am
       | curious, though-they allude to this discovery relating to
       | modeling phenomena like fluid perfusing porous materials. Are
       | precise values of constants like this "backbone exponent" a
       | practical barrier to that sort of modeling, or is this a more
       | basic discovery that's satisfying just in the sense of the
       | completeness of human knowledge?
        
         | patcon wrote:
         | I was coming here to say the same, but with less words: I
         | fuckin love Quanta.
         | 
         | I'm broke as heck, but I really hope people with more
         | discretionary income are able to support them financially <3
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2024-02-10 23:00 UTC)