Permuting the cube
Below the stickers of the rubiks cube lies a beautiful structure arising from just a handful of rules. Let us explore permutations by the example of this twisty puzzle and see how they can turn into the building blocks of the structure behind it. We can use an exciting dualism between function and data to explore the problem space and sketch a route towards finding your own solution for this and similar puzzles.
- 1 min: Opening
- Hi - I like rubiks cubes 馃憢
- Twisting, restickering and permutations are the same creature
- 1 min: what is a permutation
- 1 min: permutations expose a dualism of data and function
- 1 min: we can combine permutations to get new ones
- 1 min: we can build rotations to orient the cube
- 2 min: we can bootstrap lots of permutations from only a handful
- 2 min: solving a rubiks cube
- each position of a cube is itself a permutation
- we search for a sequence of permutations that combines to the solution
- This can be visualised as the exploration of a graph or generating elements from a group
- 1 min: search space is large, but we can build partial solutions
- People that have been frustrated by or enjoy fiddling with rubiks cubes.
- Creatures that delight in abstract structures hidden in plain sight.
- Minds that go 'What was a permutation again?' or 'How would you even start solving that cube thing?'.
- If after >46 years of rubiks cubes on earth you can still stand hearing more about them.
Jakob enjoys fiddling around with computers and loves the mechanical feel of twisting a rubiks cube. You can find him being a general nuisance on twitter as @sicarius.