Comment on Just one more square bro

• wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  My autistic ass can’t comprehend why anyone would want to arrange a prime number in a square pattern…

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  • bstix@feddit.dk ⁨40⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago

    It’s not just primes.

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square_packing

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  • wolframhydroxide@sh.itjust.works ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    I mean, the actual answer is severalfold: “sometimes, when you need to fill a space, you don’t end up with simple compound numbers of identical packages” is one,but really, it’s a problem in mathematics which, were we to have a general solution to find the most efficient method of packing n objects with identical properties into the smallest area, we would be able to more effectively predict natural structures, including predicting things like protein folding, which is a huge area of medical research.

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    • Cethin@lemmy.zip ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Even when it can’t be generalized, you still often learn something by trying. You may invent a new way to look at a set of problems that no one’s done before, or you may find a solution to something totally unrelated. There’s a lot to learn even when it looks like you’ll gain nothing.

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    • PolarKraken@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      (this is the part where you tack on a silly harmless lie at the end, like - “this specific packing optimization improvement was actually discovered accidentally, through a small mini-game introduced into Candy Crush in 2013. Players discovered the novel improvement, hundreds of individual times, within the first several minutes of launch.”)

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      • sukhmel@programming.dev ⁨54⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago

        Are you sure the story is real? I can find anything that points to it, so a link would help a lot

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  • Zwiebel@feddit.org ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Mathematicians try this with every number

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