The forum discussion centers on a significant mathematical advancement regarding a 25-year-old permutation problem related to the anime series The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. An anonymous user on 4chan initially established a lower bound of 93,884,313,611 episodes required to view all permutations of the show's 14 episodes. Recently, Australian author Greg Egan provided a new upper bound, reigniting interest in the problem. Both contributions are recognized as notable advancements in a long-standing mathematical puzzle, with implications for NP-completeness.
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That was George Dantzig, and he went on to have a very prolific career:jedishrfu said:This reminds me of the story of a grad student who came to class late saw some problems in statistics on the board and assumed they were homework. He worked them out and handed them in.
Later the prof visited him at home saying he wanted to write a foreword to his two proofs and submit them for publication. They were in fact two unproven theorems.
Some time later when he went to see his prof about his PhD research project, the prof said let’s just bundle these two theorems up as your thesis. In that moment, so many grad students became jealous.