#combinitorics

I was just talking with friends about the sudoku puzzle i was working on, in my phone. It has a detailed hint guide which includes advanced techniques like X-Wing and X-Y-Wing processes. I was just saying i can't grok the concept of the x-wing, specifically how to decide which four corners to choose (btw i think it's the outermost four, not just any four; i will test this hypothesis and discover the truth!).

She said, oh I've tried doing sudoku and it's too hard because i can't do math well enough. And i said, full of ignorance and vinegar, oh there's no math in sudoku. My other friend, who is an educator and took all the maths in college, got upset. She says, with force, that it is math. I'm intrigued and push back. I never use math to solve any of these logic puzzles. And in fact any symbol can be used due to the rules of the puzzle.

She gets mad. I ask for, like, some sort of definition. She finds several which confirm her argument that math is abstraction, math is logic, math is patterns, etc. I push back again, because anything can be a symbol, but numbers are concrete (the beginning of my ignorance, I believe), solid factual. Symbols can be used to represent numbers, but not the other way around. Math is equations, solid solutions to problems, non abstractions.

She's a bit more mad and yelly and wants to throw something at me. Now i pull back, mostly because she is being so passionate, but partly because I don't want my friend to actually be mad at me. Now i ask questions, because i want to understand. But she's still mad, still thinks I'm jibing her. So i shut the fuck up.

We're good. We had a nice hug when i had to leave at three o'fuck in the morning. She felt bad for yelling, and i assured her she was justified in her passion, and that it was okay, that i wasn't hurt by anything she said (i just don't like being yelled at; li'l bi' o' trauma innit?). I hope she's having a nice time with her girlfriend <3

But i still have a conundrum. 'Math as abstraction' i get, but 'math IS abstraction'? I think that's above my pay grade. So i gotta look into it.

The Wikipedia entry for sudoku states it is a logical combinitorial. Combinitorics is a subset of mathematics. I can accept that. But the idea that sudoku IS math is causing me pain. (That's what is meant by cognitive dissonance. After the pain subsides and you can exist with two conflicting ideas, you have resolved the cognitive dissonance, even though people say you still suffer from it.) But logic isn't math. And sudoku is primarily a logic puzzle.

Yes math also uses deduction and reason and all sorts of abstract thinking processes. But math is not those things. (to me) math is a Hard Science. You get absolute resolution from solving math problems. There are no vagaries (except for infinite sets, then you kinda have to hand wave the solution. Okay, within a finite set you get absolute answers. All praise to Mandelbrot!)

I read through Douglas Hoffstedder's (sp) Metamagical Themas and love the shit out of it. So many cool games and concepts. Oh. Now I'm meandering. Sorry.