• 9point6@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    Oh so you’re telling me that my storage unit is actually incredibly well optimised for space efficiency?

    Nice!

    • Midnitte@beehaw.org
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      8 months ago

      I’ve definitely packed a box like this, but I’ve never packed boxes like this 😳

    • chuckleslord@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      We actually haven’t found a universal packing algorithm, so it’s on a case-by-case basis. This is the best we’ve found so far for this case (17 squares in a square).

      • Natanael
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        8 months ago

        It’s kinda hilarious when the best formula only handles large numbers, not small. You’d think it would be the reverse, but sometimes it just isn’t (something about the law of large numbers making it easier to approximate good solution, in many cases)

  • bitjunkie@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    It’s important to note that while this seems counterintuitive, it’s only the most efficient because the small squares’ side length is not a perfect divisor of the large square’s.

    • jeff 👨‍💻@programming.dev
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      8 months ago

      What? No. The divisibility of the side lengths have nothing to do with this.

      The problem is what’s the smallest square that can contain 17 identical squares. If there were 16 squares it would be simply 4x4.

      • Natanael
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        8 months ago

        He’s saying the same thing. Because it’s not an integer power of 2 you can’t have a integer square solution. Thus the densest packing puts some boxes diagonally.

      • bitjunkie@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        And the next perfect divisor one that would hold all the ones in the OP pic would be 5x5. 25 > 17, last I checked.

    • sga@lemmings.world
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      8 months ago

      this is regardless of that. The meme explains it a bit wierdly, but we start with 17 squares, and try to find most efficient packing, and outer square’s size is determined by this packing.

      • dream_weasel@sh.itjust.works
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        8 months ago

        Bro, the people here, like the people everywhere, ARE stupid.

        It’s always better to be explicit. I’m one of the stupid people who learned some things reading the comments here and I’ve got a doctoral degree in aero astro engineering.

  • BlueFootedPetey@sh.itjust.works
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    8 months ago

    Is this confirmed? Like yea the picture looks legit, but anybody do this with physical blocks or at least something other than ms paint?

    • deaf_fish@midwest.socialBanned
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      8 months ago

      It is confirmed. I don’t understand it very well, but I think this video is pretty decent at explaining it.

      https://youtu.be/RQH5HBkVtgM

      The proof is done with raw numbers and geometry so doing it with physical objects would be worse, even the MS paint is a bad way to present it but it’s easier on the eyes than just numbers.

      Mathematicians would be very excited if you could find a better way to pack them such that they can be bigger.

      So it’s not like there is no way to improve it. It’s just that we haven’t found it yet.

      • BlueFootedPetey@sh.itjust.works
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        8 months ago

        I feel like the pixalation on the rotated squares is enough to say this picture is not proof.

        Again I am not saying they are wrong, just that it would be extremely easy make a picture where it looks like all the squares are all the same size.

        • Drew@sopuli.xyz
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          8 months ago

          I was joking about the proof but there’s a non-pixelated version in the comments here

    • Lemmisaur@lemmy.zip
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      8 months ago

      Say hello to the creation! .-D

      (Don’t ask about the glowing thing, just don’t let it touch your eyes.)

    • mEEGal@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      “fractal” just means “broken-looking” (as in “fracture”). see Benoît Mandelbrot’s original book on this

      I assume you mean “nice looking self-replicating pattern”, which you can easily obtain by replacing each square by the whole picture over and over again

      • psud@aussie.zone
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        8 months ago

        Fractal might have meant that when Mandelbrot coined the name, but that is not what it means now.