{"id":187,"date":"2007-10-13T16:18:03","date_gmt":"2007-10-13T20:18:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/?p=179"},"modified":"2007-10-13T16:18:03","modified_gmt":"2007-10-13T20:18:03","slug":"sports-scheduling-and-rubiks-cube","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/2007\/10\/13\/sports-scheduling-and-rubiks-cube\/","title":{"rendered":"Sports Scheduling and Rubik\u2019s Cube"},"content":{"rendered":"

The October 6, 2007 edition of The Spectator<\/a> (an English weekly with a right-of-center, Olde England bias but wonderful cartoons, chess column, and commentary once the bias is accounted for) contains a “review” of a book The Blind Eye: A Book of Late Advice<\/em><\/a> by the poet Don Paterson<\/a> (I don’t think the book is available in the US). The review is actually just a collection of 30 or so extracts from the book. The review alone left me chuckling all morning. Some quotes:<\/p>\n

\n

I can see exactly what not<\/em> to do at the moment. No doubt through the usual process of elimination, I’ll arrive at my favourite strategy of total paralysis.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

I enjoyed L.’s creeping senility. I could have him repeat my favorite stories as often as I wanted, sometimes several times in the space of the same afternoon. X’s sudden lurch into his anecdotage, on the other hand, was a disaster: until then, his shyness had prevented our discovering what a bore<\/em> he was.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

and<\/p>\n

\n

You’ve made a blog<\/em> … clever boy! Next: flushing.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

One really hit home for me:<\/p>\n

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A poem with one line wrong is like a Rubik’s Cube with one square wrong: what it is precisely not<\/em> is one move away from completion.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I have been looking for an intuitive explanation to various sports leagues on why a schedule that is perfect except for one flaw is likely a long way from a perfect schedule. I will proceed to rip off this analogy and pretend it is my own.\u00a0 I admit that comparing a schedule to Rubik’s cube is not as clever as comparing a poem to the cube:\u00a0 I wonder if I should compare a schedule to a poem?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The October 6, 2007 edition of The Spectator (an English weekly with a right-of-center, Olde England bias but wonderful cartoons, chess column, and commentary once the bias is accounted for) contains a “review” of a book The Blind Eye: A Book of Late Advice by the poet Don Paterson (I don’t think the book is … Continue reading “Sports Scheduling and Rubik\u2019s Cube”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,51],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-187","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-sports"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=187"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=187"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}