@ZachWeinersmith … so that's what Hamming distance is :)
@jernej__s
I was vaguely aware of Hamming distance. I was chronically unaware of its relation to oranges and cannonballs. Now I am aware.
@ZachWeinersmith
@ZachWeinersmith Brilliant! And if I can put on my radiology department hat for a second — MRI machines are claustrophobic, expensive, and a limited resource, so anything that can speed them up even a little bit is a big deal.
@ZachWeinersmith "only true of Claude Shannon" lol

@WizardOfDocs @ZachWeinersmith A Flame-throwing trombone?

Cool, I want one. Does Claude have a supplier he can connect me with?

Unicycling Darth Vader upgrades to Flaming Bagpipes - Keep Portland Weird - The Unipiper *Official*

YouTube

@MHowell @ZachWeinersmith it occurs to me that a class action lawsuit of people named Claude against Anthropic would not go amiss

seeing this in my mentions and not remembering what I'd said, the first thing I think of for "Claude" is not Shannon, or any other human for that matter

@WizardOfDocs @ZachWeinersmith Perhaps, rather than lawsuits, a flame-throwing trombone could be used to reduce some data centers to a smoldering ruin.
@ZachWeinersmith The last panel 🐪! (Obscure Terry Pratchet ref.)
@ZachWeinersmith so much love for this comic series 😍
@ZachWeinersmith More like this, please. Are you planning a book?
@bosak No such plans, right now :)
@ZachWeinersmith Small niggle - it wasn't clear that the narrator was a specific person (Mr. Tao) rather than an abstract character. I only realised at the end and had to go back to find their name.
@TomF @ZachWeinersmith
(for me, it was clear from the name pair in the title panel, FWIW)
@ZachWeinersmith How come you had an imaginary Erdös number? 🤔
@ZachWeinersmith How do you tile a hexagon with polyominos?
@ZachWeinersmith i hope to see thompson and jenkins return, probably in a prequel so they still have that story driving conflict.
@ZachWeinersmith I read all comics with trombones in them.
@ZachWeinersmith oh so *that's* how Hamming codes work. Pretty picture make better pedagogical tool than entire chapter in text book.
@ZachWeinersmith moral of the story: mathematicians don't know when to *stop* answering the question (bless 'em) :)
@FMarquardtGroup this is the second time sphere packing has randomly appeared in my attention space in the last 24 hours (the other was Grant from 3B1B giving at talk at UC Santa Cruz on it, kinda https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fsLh-NYhOoU )
The most beautiful formula not enough people understand

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@ZachWeinersmith I'm no math whiz (EDIT: that's wrong; I have minimal education in math but I find it absolutely beautiful) but I AM a trombone player who has put a propane burner into my instrument. Do I count?

I have a fascination with people who do mathematics and other sciences, I've been an artist my whole life and those other arts are so interesting if foreign to me.

@ZachWeinersmith is the crypto challenge in a patreon panel?
Maybe I just missed it looking on my phone
@sluggard @ZachWeinersmith It's on the last page, in plain text and also in the bonus thing you get by clicking on the big red button on that page.
@ZachWeinersmith I press the forward arrow, but nothing happens! I don’t computer very good.

@ZachWeinersmith
I thought mathematicians mostly help insurance companies to rip people of.

(Awesome comic btw. Much love!)

@ZachWeinersmith ... did you forget to finish panel 1 in part 2? 😃
@ZachWeinersmith I think I'll just stop at the sorcerer thing, that should do to strike fear in the hearts of my students
I note that it has been decreed that an imaginary component to one's Erdős number is conferred by wearing the coat of Paul Erdős (or the coat of someone who has worn it, etc.) Mine is 5+i. Cc @ZachWeinersmith