Lessons from working 6 months on a math problem (and failing)
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I'm a coder, most certainly not a mathematician. But when I saw the 17x17 challenge in late 2011, I couldn't resist having a crack at it. You can read a bit more on the problem itself here. Each day, I couldn't resist spending another day on it. Long story short, despite some temporary success, I didn't end up solving the problem. But I consider that time spent, about 6 months of full-time effort, to have been an incredibly worthwhile investment. Below is the furthest I got, a grid with 3 monochromatic rectangles (every corner of the rectangles marked is on the same colour). Still not zero which was the goal, but for a few months, it was the 'least broken' solution known.
Lessons from working 6 months on a math problem (and failing)
Lessons from working 6 months on a math…
Lessons from working 6 months on a math problem (and failing)
I'm a coder, most certainly not a mathematician. But when I saw the 17x17 challenge in late 2011, I couldn't resist having a crack at it. You can read a bit more on the problem itself here. Each day, I couldn't resist spending another day on it. Long story short, despite some temporary success, I didn't end up solving the problem. But I consider that time spent, about 6 months of full-time effort, to have been an incredibly worthwhile investment. Below is the furthest I got, a grid with 3 monochromatic rectangles (every corner of the rectangles marked is on the same colour). Still not zero which was the goal, but for a few months, it was the 'least broken' solution known.