News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Anime fans stumbled upon a mathematical proof by robinhouston on Friday March 07, 2025 @08:58AM (#43290186)
I fear I'm responsible for this misconception. At first we didn't realise the proof had originated on 4chan – Nathaniel Johnston originally found the proof on Wikia, and the 4chan archive was only discovered later.

When I tweeted about it, I said “The best known lower bound for the minimal length of superpermutations was proved by an anonymous user of a wiki mainly devoted to anime.”, by which I meant Wikia (which was pretty anime-centric at the time).

I think, combined with the fact that the problem was posed to 4chan in terms of Haruhi, and because it makes a funnier story, that the anime angle has been a bit exaggerated.

Having said that, the author of the proof is not (to the best of my knowledge) a mathematician, nor does he have any apparent desire to publish his result in a conventional form, so it's still a pretty unexpected place for such a result to originate.

Re:Anime fans stumbled upon a mathematical proof by throwaway37725 on Friday March 07, 2025 @10:11AM (#43290771)
>At first we didn't realise the proof had originated on 4chan – Nathaniel Johnston originally found the proof on Wikia

>by an anonymous user of a wiki mainly devoted to anime.”, by which I meant Wikia (which was pretty anime-centric at the time).

The Wikia in question is the official 4chan /sci/ Wikia.

Re:Anime fans stumbled upon a mathematical proof by robinhouston on Friday March 07, 2025 @10:28AM (#43290915)
I know. My description was aimed at people who had never heard of Wikia, and certainly didn't understand its substructure. But I realise it sounds wrong to people like you who do understand that, and I wish I'd worded it more carefully.
Re:Anime fans stumbled upon a mathematical proof by nativeit on Monday March 10, 2025 @07:50AM (#43319515)
Is /sci/ on 4chan a real hub of traditional research and professional academia? I think I’d be confused by all the distinctions you anime fans are drawing here.
Re:Anime fans stumbled upon a mathematical proof by wodenokoto on Sunday March 09, 2025 @11:23AM (#43309846)
Regardless, thanks for bringing this to the broader attention of the world!