xkcd #173: Movie Seating (20 Oct 2006)
xkcd #173: Movie Seating (20 Oct 2006)
cross-posted from: https://programming.dev/post/8619086
Title text:
It's like the traveling salesman problem, but the endpoints are different and you can't ask your friends for help because they're sitting three seats down.
Links:
Good thing I don't know enough people for me to ever go to the movies in that big a group.
the problem here is technically not you knowing people but that the people you know can also know people that you don't know, expanding the graph beyond the first layer that you personally observe.
tl;dr: don't allow recursive invites
You also need to account for where the really tall people are in the row in front of you. Social optimization be damned, I want to see!
And group people based on how loud their snacks are.
Also, am I the only one hating that person who keeps talking how the seating is suboptimal while everyone else tries to watch the movie?
Those ones you group outside the movie theater.
Yeah, well we want to have enough space to sit lower, but it's not always an option unfortunately! :-)
Optimal seating for this group would probable be this graph left to right, except for one-way crush person, they go on the very right.
First couple > bottom friend > top friend > second couple > top right friend > 1-way crusher
Friends are within 1 seat of each other.
The group in this comic is bizarrely low connectivity for what is supposedly a friendship group. Not a single 3-cycle of actual friends among them?