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Mathematicians Crack a Century-Old Problem That's Perfect For Your Next Party
(www.sciencealert.com)
this post was submitted on 07 Nov 2023
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TLDR if you invite over 25 people to a party, you can know that people can cluster in small groups where everyone in the small group knows each other, or everyone is meeting for the first time.
I've read the whole thing and I feel like there's something that's just assumed that everyone understands.
What exactly is the problem? Why do we care how many people know each other or don't? I'm so confused.
These types of abstract problems often get applied to physics or various optimization problems where efficient solutions can save a ton of work or enable new techniques
But this seems to claim it solves some practical problem with parties. I don't know what that problems.
It's about what combinations of "nodes" with specific relations to others are possible in a group of different sizes
That's just a simple way to phrase the problem in concrete terms. The immediate applications are usually not of interest, unlike the novel techniques with which hard problems are solved.