And then you read the abstract and realize that this is an improvement of an earlier result using five polygons (which in turn built on a history of earlier results).So, still a great result, but not as out there as one may think.I think it&#x27;s also worth pointing out that in theoretical CS and most of math, it is common to list authors alphabetically. I don&#x27;t think we have a way of knowing the relative contribution of the two authors. Demaine is obviously accomplished, but I find the kind of hero worship found in this thread distasteful and the facts don&#x27;t support it here. Give credit to Langerman; Demaine surely would!

Woah! It is the same guy that got me through my algorithms course at university with his youtube MIT OpenCourseWare videos!His lectures are absolute gold. He explains everything so clearly, simply, and efficiently.I started skipping lectures in favor of watching his videos, and it saved me countless of hours -- and I got a perfect mark :)

His page - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;erikdemaine.org&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;erikdemaine.org&#x2F;</a>

This is why I refer to my wife as my ex-girlfriend.

Well he was a child prodigy, but he is no longer a child. A suitable replacement would need to reword the sentence to be about the same length and include that detail without the odd sounding wording.

&quot;He was a prodigy. He still is, but he was one, too.&quot;Very challenging to word in a succinct manner.

How do you feel about &quot;former child actor&quot;?

Yes, child prodigy is entirely about being a child.

Every year we hear about some kid who is &quot;smarter than Einstein and Hawking&quot; but for the most part, we never hear about them again. Child prodigies that turn into extraordinary adults seem to be rare. If you were to ask me to name some, the only one I&#x27;d be able to name off hand would be Stephen Wolfram. That here is another one is of interest even if it is of little consequence to his current accomplishments.

It&#x27;s a little weird to call a 43-year-old a &quot;child prodigy&quot;, yes. The phrase is left-associative.

Interesting take so upvoted, but calling him a child prodigy does not work as he&#x27;s not a child.Maybe &quot;a child prodigy in his youth&quot; would be both precise and succinct enough, but at the same time language is for humans and I feel humans know what is meant by former child prodigy.

&gt;former child prodigyI understand the idea behind that phrasing but I&#x27;m not sure I agree with it. Are you no longer a child prodigy once you turn 18? I don&#x27;t think I&#x27;d ever say &quot;former intelligent child&quot;.. Would I?

First you ask how the hell someone could come up with this construction.Then you realize it was this guy:
<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Erik_Demaine" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Erik_Demaine</a>

The author gave a talk on this at Tufts during the FWCG last week. Fascinating talk.One interesting question from audience was whether the ratio between the largest polygon piece and the smallest piece can be made bounded, as the current construction has unbounded ratio.

I don&#x27;t think that is known. But the limit is low, something like five

That&#x27;s reminicient of the post correspondence problem. Is the PCP still undecidable for sets of three strings?

I read the title of this paper and thought to myself, “What are the chances this could be Erik Demaine?”. And sure enough!

While not proven, is the intuition that this will also be undecideable for 1 and 2 polygon tilings?

Erik Demaine always has some fun stuff for us.

Tiling with Three Polygons Is Undecidable