eggynack

eggynack

@eggynack.bsky.social

Teacher of some kind. Trans woman of some other kind. Mathematically inclined. She/her.

99 followers74 following2.2K posts

eggynack
@eggynack.bsky.social

On the show Pantheon, the main character's dad is an incredible genius at computer science, and he's particularly an expert at a kind of problem that's relevant to the show's big tech thing. And the kind of problem he's good at? NP-complete problems.

Nome@nome.bsky.social

What's your incredibly niche pet peeve, that couldn't possibly matter? I'll start: I will never forgive Starfox for making people think that this is a barrel roll.

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eggynack
@eggynack.bsky.social

The third is, no, you can't do it faster than a computer. You can come up with more efficient search algorithms, but you put those into the computer. The idea of a human using magic genius brain to check out a bazillion options is bizarre.

eggynack
@eggynack.bsky.social

This is so trivial to solve. Just say he's working on P=NP, a classic unsolved problem about whether you can cut down how long it takes to solve these to the amount of time required to verify them. The show introduces trivial hacking and this could even be how that happens. Cause it'd do that.

eggynack
@eggynack.bsky.social

On the show Pantheon, the main character's dad is an incredible genius at computer science, and he's particularly an expert at a kind of problem that's relevant to the show's big tech thing. And the kind of problem he's good at? NP-complete problems.

Nome@nome.bsky.social

What's your incredibly niche pet peeve, that couldn't possibly matter? I'll start: I will never forgive Starfox for making people think that this is a barrel roll.

View full thread
eggynack
@eggynack.bsky.social

For those unaware, NP-complete problems are a class of problem with a ton of computation required for a solution. The classic example is the travelling salesman problem. What is the optimal route to hit a bunch of locations given paths from one to another with arbitrary weights?

eggynack
@eggynack.bsky.social

So, the first issue is, these problems aren't intrinsically interesting. By which I mean, you don't exactly brain your way through determining optimal paths. The second is, I said that travelling salesman is an example, but it's also identical to every other NP-Complete problem. That's the point.

eggynack
@eggynack.bsky.social

On the show Pantheon, the main character's dad is an incredible genius at computer science, and he's particularly an expert at a kind of problem that's relevant to the show's big tech thing. And the kind of problem he's good at? NP-complete problems.

Nome@nome.bsky.social

What's your incredibly niche pet peeve, that couldn't possibly matter? I'll start: I will never forgive Starfox for making people think that this is a barrel roll.

eggynack
@eggynack.bsky.social

I think this comes up in the show like three times, and with increasing ridiculousness. One of the times it's specifically noted that he can do all kinds of NP-complete problems, and is better at them than a computer.

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