How Anime Fans Stumbled upon a Mathematical Proof (www.scientificamerican.com)

submitted 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) by wjs018@ani.social to c/anime@ani.social

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Some snippets from the article:

Math solutions can be found in surprising places, including the dark realms of the Internet. In 2011 an anonymous poster on the now infamously controversial image board 4chan posed a mathematical puzzle about the cult classic anime series The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya.

The first season of this anime series consists of 14 episodes that were designed so that you can watch them in any order you like. ... At some point in a 2011 discussion of the series on 4chan, someone asked the minimum number of episodes they would have to watch to have seen it in every possible order.

one of the anonymous users made an estimate of the minimum amount of all episodes to watch with an approach that was previously unknown to mathematicians

Amazing coincidence that this was just published after the recent post in this community about alternate watch orders.

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[-] muhyb@programming.dev 16 points 4 months ago

As a Haruhi fan, this was an interesting read.

[-] Flagstaff@programming.dev 2 points 4 months ago

I'm thinking of becoming a Haruhi fan. Does this basically mean it's like Black Mirror or the Twilight Zone?

[-] muhyb@programming.dev 1 points 4 months ago

Haven't watched either (though Black Mirror is still in my backlog) but as far as I know the Black Mirror episodes are standalone, while Haruhi has an order (there is even a chronological order) one way or another.

I can fully recommend being a fan.

this post was submitted on 07 Mar 2025

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