Mazes
From Maze
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Curiously, Dantzig himself as acquired legendary status as the student who upon arriving late to a class mistook the historically unsolved problems on the board as his homework. Needless to say, his professor was surprised when he turned in the solutions several weeks later. If nothing else, the story reflects the status of this modern day Theseus. | Curiously, Dantzig himself as acquired legendary status as the student who upon arriving late to a class mistook the historically unsolved problems on the board as his homework. Needless to say, his professor was surprised when he turned in the solutions several weeks later. If nothing else, the story reflects the status of this modern day Theseus. | ||
| − | Critically CPA has been used not so much in hedgerows or darkened hallways but in the twisty little corridors of project management. Around the same time that Dantzig was developing his model, Critical Path Method, developed by James E. Kelley and Morgan Walker at Dupont, offered an algorithmic approach to the shortest path problem in project management. | + | Critical Path Analysis has been used not so much in hedgerows or darkened hallways but in the twisty little corridors of project management. Around the same time that Dantzig was developing his model, Critical Path Method, developed by James E. Kelley and Morgan Walker at Dupont, offered an algorithmic approach to the shortest path problem in project management. |
The shortest-path problem has proven to be one of the grand challenges of the late twentieth century. The puzzle appears in telephone routing, planning routes for driving, and optimizing circuit boards. Solutions to the problem would become part of the crucial machinery of electronic networks, for example in autorouters. Yet these tools were not so far removed from the physical mazes. According to a site on the history of mazes, "The first autorouter was tested on a map of the maze at Hampton Court Palace about 35 years ago." | The shortest-path problem has proven to be one of the grand challenges of the late twentieth century. The puzzle appears in telephone routing, planning routes for driving, and optimizing circuit boards. Solutions to the problem would become part of the crucial machinery of electronic networks, for example in autorouters. Yet these tools were not so far removed from the physical mazes. According to a site on the history of mazes, "The first autorouter was tested on a map of the maze at Hampton Court Palace about 35 years ago." | ||
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An interesting reversal happens as math takes up mazes. As maze-solving algorithms are applied to more and more real world puzzles, they in turn prove themselves to be mazes of telephones, rest stops, and resisters. Even more importantly, the terror of the maze is not the minotaur but time itself, time which can be just as easily lost in unproductive paths. | An interesting reversal happens as math takes up mazes. As maze-solving algorithms are applied to more and more real world puzzles, they in turn prove themselves to be mazes of telephones, rest stops, and resisters. Even more importantly, the terror of the maze is not the minotaur but time itself, time which can be just as easily lost in unproductive paths. | ||
| − | Of course, the celebrity of 10 Print... grows out of the quest for optimization, where the clever distillation of a solution to one line becomes the sign of mastery. The mathematical grand challenge of finding the shortest path thus introduces the aesthetic of optimization into the lore of mazes. Mazes become the basic structure of the challenges to modern computing, business, and civic life. 10 PRINT... in this light pays tribute to a most fundamental structure of contemporary life and the obstacle to commercial profits, traffic flows, and the coursing of information over networks. | + | Of course, the celebrity of 10 Print... grows out of the quest for optimization, where the clever distillation of a solution to one line becomes the sign of mastery. The mathematical grand challenge of finding the shortest path thus introduces the aesthetic of optimization into the lore of mazes. Mazes become the basic structure of the challenges to modern computing, business, and civic life. 10 PRINT... in this light pays tribute to a most fundamental structure of contemporary life and the obstacle to commercial profits, traffic flows, and the coursing of information over networks. The maze and the network prove themselves to be cousins when treated by the Thesei of mathematics. |
James E. Kelley, J., & Walker, M. R. (1959). Critical-path planning and scheduling. In Papers presented at the December 1-3, 1959, eastern joint IRE-AIEE-ACM computer conference (pp. 160-173). Boston, Massachusetts: ACM. doi:10.1145/1460299.1460318 | James E. Kelley, J., & Walker, M. R. (1959). Critical-path planning and scheduling. In Papers presented at the December 1-3, 1959, eastern joint IRE-AIEE-ACM computer conference (pp. 160-173). Boston, Massachusetts: ACM. doi:10.1145/1460299.1460318 | ||
