uncommercial song

Abstract:

We prove NP-hardness results for five of Nintendo’s largest video game franchises: Mario, Donkey Kong, Legend of Zelda, Metroid, and Pokemon. Our results apply to Super Mario Bros. 1, 3, Lost Levels, and Super Mario World; Donkey Kong Country 1-3; all Legend of Zelda games except Zelda II: The Adventure of Link; all Metroid games; and all Pokemon role-playing games. For Mario and Donkey Kong, we show NP-completeness. In addition, we observe that several games in the Zelda series are PSPACE-complete.

Related news article (if you’re into that sort of thing): Scientists: ‘Games are hard’.

Being a maths nerd in a philosophy lesson.

Basically this is Descartes fault. In the thing we were discussing Descartes uses geometric proof as an example of the Clearness and Distinctness Principle which is one of those stupid ideas that Descartes uses to justify fairly terrible arguments for the existence of God.

I said that it was interesting that the geometric proof he uses, relied on an axiom called Euclid’s Parallel Postulate which is famously worth avoiding and only holds in certain circumstances. I suggested that this exposed weakness in the veracity of all his initial assumptions.

About the time I got this far, the life had drained from the faces of everyone in the class and now I think everyone hates me.

fuckyeahmath:

(via prozac34)

I lol’d. Also I totally remember these questions from when I was a young’un’. I never understood why the needed to make up a character - why couldn’t they just say “here’s a statement, give a counterexample” without being all patronising.

Maths exams were stupid.