The Unapologetic Mathematician

I’ve now determined that the distance from here to the department is not as walkable as the same distance would be in New Haven.

As I recover, here is a paper on solving the Travelling Salesman Problem. The authors do so with “white light interferometry”, which sort of makes it a quantum computation algorithm.

The thing they’re overstating is this: this is far from the first reduction of an NP-complete problem to a polynomial-time solution. What they miss out on is that their algorithm is exponential in space — the amount of computational space required goes up exponentially with the size of the problem. Specifically, it takes photons to solve the -city problem. Thus it’s not really that new as far as computational complexity goes. Still.

With a hat tip to God Plays Dice, I’d like to point out that my new place has a Walk Score of 86/100. It’d probably be more if they realized that the little market behind my building is (a) competitively priced, (b) good quality, (c) also a deli and a liquor store, to which (a) and (b) also apply. And a Walgreen’s across the street.

Well, I’m settled in to New Orleans a bit. All of the stuff from the truck is in my apartment with the great help of Johnny Feng, a grad student here in Tulane’s department, but there are a few snags.

I’m currently connecting through New Orleans’ universal free wi-fi. It’s decent enough, but I’ll be happier when I get the real interwebs connected next Wednesday morning. Also, it seems to be somewhat restrictive unless you input some sort of code every so often. Which means that I’ll probably just suck it up and deal with my iPhone being on dial-up while I’m out and about and not in range of, say, Tulane’s wireless (which I should have working tomorrow). The upshot is that despite my being too tired right now to make a proper post, there may be one in the offing for tomorrow if I get the chance.

Also, the apartment is in relatively good shape. The new carpet smells it, which reminds me every time I enter the place that it’s offgassing in an attempt to kill me in my sleep. Indian burial grounds have nothing on modern polymers. The place had been uninhabited for a few months, but my mother and I went at it with a few cleaning supplies. All that gives trouble now is the fact that the dishwasher seems to be on the fritz and the shower doesn’t drain. The former I can deal with for a while because I spent the last seven years washing dishes by hand.

The latter, however, is a bit more of a problem. When I say it doesn’t drain I mean it completely doesn’t drain. We managed to make good enough time to get the keys yesterday and look around in the afternoon (about 17:00 local time). When we ran the tub a bit to check the pipes, the water didn’t drain. And it’s still there today (about 22:30 local time). I managed to reach the property manager still at her office yesterday when we noticed the problem, and she said she’d call someone, who’d call me back first, but we haven’t heard anything yet.

I’ll have to call her again tomorrow about the dishwasher anyhow, and my mother can wash the newsprint off the dishes coming out of packing while I make my way around the department. Then in the afternoon when she can check into the Hilton (an old friend of hers who lives in Houston is coming for the long weekend) I can get a proper shower.

But my desk/television stand is assembled, as is my bed and my bookshelves. Lacking the healing rays of Colbert I’ll be heading back to the shelf to put up the bulk of my books now.